Phone Cards & Web Calling Magazine

The company has warned of the need for urgent investment in the internet's infrastructure, deliberately avoiding the term 'net neutrality'

The US telecoms giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010.

Speaking ata Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the internet will not be able to cope with theincreasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.

The surge in online content is at the centre of the most dramatic changes affecting the internet today, he said. In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire internet today.

Cicconi, who was speaking at the event as part of a wider series of meetings with UK government officials, said that at least $55bn (27.5bn) worth of investment was needed in new infrastructure in the next three years in the US alone, with the figure rising to $130bn to improve the network worldwide. We are going to be butting up against the physical capacity of the internet by 2010, he said.

Heclaimed that the unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic would increase fifty-fold by 2015 and that AT&T was investing $19bnto maintain its network and upgrade its backbone network.

Cicconi added that more demand for high-definition (HD) video will put increasing strain on the internet infrastructure. Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon and HD is seven to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today, he said.

Here is a link to a document created by FTC regarding phone cards. It's very basic and consumers’ understanding of the market is far beyond what is says, but still it's a good starting point for those who are planning to use Phone cards or just started recently:

http://webharvest.gov/peth04/20041020034012/www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/products/buytime.pdf

fring, a mobile Internet community and service, on Wednesday (16 April) became the first mobile VoIP application to be made publicly available for the iPhone from computer company Apple, enabling users to talk, chat and interact with other fring users and all of their online communities, using their iPhone's Wi-Fi connection.

A preview R&D version of the mobile VoIP application, developed in conjunction with the Holon Institute of Technology academic research labs in Israel, is available for use on the iPhone from http://www.fring.com The pre-release version has reportedly been designed to answer demand from iPhone-owning would-be fring users and at the same time enable the company to learn about user experience, benefit from feedback, and influence the R&D process of the full release version, due for release later in 2008.

During login, fring creates an integrated contact list, combining contacts from all of the users' selected Internet communities. It offers special features including real-time, PC-style 'presence' indicators, which display whether contacts are online, away, offline, in a call, on their mobiles or in front of their PCs, the company claims.

fring for iPhone is free to download and free to use.

Comparison of Apple TV with other TV streaming devices: Mac mini, Vudu, Archos TV, Xbox 360, TiVo, D-Link Media, Netgear EVA8000, Zensonic Z500. This is kind of off topic, but might be intereting for those who are considering buying a TV streaming device. They are bunch of different things available in the market, so good to know how to compare them. By the way, Apple TV is not the best one according to this table and surprisingly for me, XBox seems the best. I didn't know that XBox could work like Apple TV. So, have a look at this benchmarking table ->

Atlantic-ACM, a telecommunications research consultancy and benchmarking firm, announced the latest edition of the prepaid telecommunications industry s principle market sizing and opportunity assessment Prepaid Evolution 2008 to 2012: Wireless, Card & Internet Opportunities.

The prepaid industry, which historically has been subject to rapid change by virtue of its niche focus, faces varying outlooks across Internet, calling card and wireless products, said Fedor Smith, VP of Atlantic-ACM. Prepaid wireless products are well positioned for growth over the next several years, and will drive overall prepaid industry growth from $15B in 2007 to $22B in 2012.

Prepaid Evolution 2008 to 2012: Wireless, Card & Internet Opportunities explores each of the individual prepaid products, wireless, phone card, and Internet, at great length. For prepaid calling cards products, the study provides market sizing in terms of revenue and traffic, the split between domestic and international, and company share breakouts with forecast from 2004 to 2012. The prepaid Internet section examines the technologies and business models driving growth in broadband availability.

The prepaid wireless section examines the split between postpaid and prepaid as a percent age of total subscribers, as well as company-specific share detail, prepaid ARPU, revenue and subscribers, and a share breakout between MVNOs and facilities-based carriers, forecast through 2012. The report provides insight into prepaid market segmentation by providing data and analysis of demographic groups cut by ethnicity, income and age. Trends in payment technology are covered, as is a sizing and share of international voice traffic and revenue.

Report information: www.atlantic-acm.com/reports/ppd0812.htm

VoIP is already transforming consumer home phone service, now it may be set to shake up the world of mobile phones.
By Ben Macklin - Senior Analyst

The emergence of voice over IP (VoIP) technology has already had a significant impact on the traditional circuit-switched landline sector worldwide, but a new report from Analysys suggests that VoIP will have an even bigger impact on the mobile phone sector. The telecoms consultancy firm suggests that once 3G technologies are enhanced to allow for greater bandwidth transfer, there will be a compelling case for mobile operators to switch from circuit-switched voice to mass-market cellular VoIP.
Analysys estimates that by 2012, mobile VoIP revenues will total $18.6 billion in the US, a considerably larger sum than revenues generated from fixed VoIP services.

Call quality is the biggest factor in customer satisfaction for prepaid mobile users, according to the J.D. Power and Associates "2007 U.S. Wireless Prepaid Customer Satisfaction Study."

Call quality was judged as the most important prepaid service attribute by 24% of respondents. Other elements named, in descending order of importance, were company image (19%); cost of service (17%); account management (15%); initial activation (11%); service plan options (8%); and customer service (6%).

"It's encouraging to see that industrywide service improvements such as expanded service offerings and aggressive service plan pricing have resulted in higher satisfaction with wireless service experiences," said Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates, in a statement.

Prepaid customers used 218 minutes per month. That is less than half as much as postpaid customers, who averaged 528 minutes per month.

Nearly six in 10 prepaid phones with prepackaged minutes came from retail stores. One-quarter of prepaid customers bought their phones online. About 16% purchased minutes cards separately from their mobile phones.

J.D. Power surveyed 2,925 prepaid mobile customers.