Netizen

Friday, May 28, 2010

India Broadband Spectrum Bids

The beauty of the mobile space is best felt in markets like India where people's first introduction to any form of telecommunication comes in the form of a simple mobile phone in their hands that they use for something basic like making phone calls. This reminds me of the early days of the PC revolution in the US when software people wrote code for chips that were, well, not powerful at all. You ran simple programs. But they were novel and mesmerizing. You felt like you were at the forefront.

To make voice calls, no literacy is required. That is a revolutionary concept.

There is ample demand in India for the kind of broadband services that the average user in the US takes for granted. After all India boasts of the largest middle class in the world. And it has plenty of the super rich, the dollar millionaires and billionaires.

But for me the most fascinating aspect of the unfolding story is the way it impacts people who Bill Gates calls "the bottom two billion." Fully one fourth of those might be right there in India. And they aspire to make phone calls. Many of them aspire to make phone calls before they even own phones. An entrepreneur in a small village will purchase a phone. Next thing you know he/she is in business. Relatives far away will call up. They will be asked to call back again in an hour. In the mean time someone will go fetch the person in the village who will come wait by the phone. And they get to talk, for a small fee. That is revolutionary. It does not require literacy. It is real time. It is cheap. People don't just call in emergencies. They call to say hello, they call to make small talk. Why? Because it is possible, and they can afford it. If they can afford a cup of tea, they can afford a phone call. Suddenly a family member going to a far away city to work, or even to another country, is not that scary a proposition. Go do that, just make sure you stay in touch.

Between that and the FM radio, you got people who are super connected. And they are all ears. They are learning. The world is changing at a rapid clip.

That is the low end of the market. At the high end you have people who compete globally and often win. They operate at global speeds, on global standards.

India Broadband Spectrum Bids Reach $1.13 Billion on Fourth Day BusinessWeek India’s government got bids totaling 52.45 billion rupees ($1.13 billion) on the fourth day of an auction for licenses to offer faster wireless broadband for computers nationwide .... Qualcomm Inc., the world’s biggest maker of mobile-phone chips, and Vodafone Group Plc, the largest mobile carrier by sales ..... 22 regional zones in the world’s second-largest wireless market by subscribers ...... Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s biggest wireless operator
Broadband spectrum price touches Rs 5245 cr Hindu Business Line Value of pan India broadband spectrum has reached Rs 5,245.1 crore at the end of the fourth day of bidding. The auction picked up more intensity on Friday with eight rounds of bidding.
India broadband spectrum bidding hots up Economic Times Bids for one set of all-India wireless broadband spectrum licences reached 31.98 billion rupees ($670 million), or about 83 percent higher than the base price, on the second day of an auction ...... Eleven firms including India's top three telecoms firms -- Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Vodafone Essar -- and US chipmaker Qualcomm Inc, are bidding for broadband spectrum....... bidding for third-generation (3G) spectrum that ended last Wednesday after 34 days and 183 rounds. The sale fetched the Indian government 677 billion rupees in revenue, nearly double the total estimated from both 3G and wireless broadband spectrum auctions. .......
Bid to start discussion on 4G tech Calcutta Telegraph Auction of 3G spectrum raked in over Rs 67,000 crore for the government, while wireless broadband spectrum is expected to fetch around Rs 20,000 crore. Long term evolution (LTE) technology, or 4G, allows more data to be transferred over the same bandwidth used by 3G but at higher speeds....... Dual mobile service provider Tata Teleservices ..... Qualcomm has also sought large chunks of radio waves for advanced technologies like LTE. ..... Around 59 operators have committed to LTE launches in 28 countries with up to 22 LTE networks in service by 2010 and 37 LTE networks in service by 2011.
India's 3G spectrum auction raises $14.6 billion BusinessWeek The government had expected to get less than 350 billion rupees ($7.5 billion) ....... Two state owned companies, which were given advance spectrum, must also match the winning bid prices, making the total government take 677 billion rupees ($14.6 billion). ....... None of the seven winning operators will have a nationwide presence. Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Aircel each won bids in 13 of 22 areas, more than any other company. Vodafone bought into nine areas. ........ Market leaders Bharti, Vodafone and Reliance Communications paid dearly for spectrum in the key markets of Mumbai and New Delhi, but will need to tie up with smaller players to provide nationwide coverage for their 3G customers. ........ The three winning bidders for New Delhi spectrum each paid 33.2 billion rupees ($715.5 million), while Mumbai's three winners paid 32.5 billion rupees ($700.4 million). ........ The auction hit in the middle of a brutal cellular price war in India, and paying for spectrum will hit already eroding margins. ...... India's mobile market is far from mature, adding 20 million users a month, many of them in rural villages ....... what many operators really wanted was not the 3G license, but the additional spectrum to serve India's fast-growing customer base. ...... My interest is in providing basic services, like voice ...... it could take five years before operators recoup their bids.
Spectrum fear fuels 3G craze Calcutta Telegraph Fears over the availability of 2G spectrum in the future, which could jack up its cost, have led telecom operators to bid over Rs 70,000 crore for third-generation (3G) spectrum in the ongoing auction. ..... Though the spectrum payout may put a significant strain on their resources, most operators are willing to take on “additional debt or dilution of stake” for assets, which will provide “long-term returns” ...... The telecom ministry has banned the allocation of 2G spectrum, or radio waves through which voice and data travel, till it finalises a mechanism for pricing the resource. ...... A single provisional bid for pan-India 3G spectrum today touched Rs 16,531 crore, beating all analyst estimates. So far, the government has earned Rs 66,802 crore, around 91 per cent more than the Rs 35,000 crore it had hoped to garner by auctioning 3G and broadband wireless spectrum. The Delhi circle received the highest bid of Rs 3,284 crore followed by Mumbai at Rs 3,183 crore. ....... operators with a 12-15 per cent 2G and 3G combined market share will have an internal rate of return of 15 per cent over 10 years.
Qualcomm Eyes Expansion with India LTE Bid Wireless Week Qualcomm is an enabler – a technology enabler, that is. The company has used its considerable financial resources to accelerate the development and deployment of technologies ranging from its core CDMA business to its mobile television subsidiary FLO TV. Yesterday, Qualcomm put this strategy into play in India, the world’s second-largest CDMA market. ...... It might seem a little odd for a chipmaker to want to get into the network infrastructure space, but it’s not out of character for Qualcomm. The company’s $18.2 billion cash stash can be leveraged to invest in areas that will accelerate business for Qualcomm’s cash cow – its chip making business. ...... CDMA technology will eventually stop being a growth generator for Qualcomm. ..... “They’ve really been pushing into LTE because they need that to keep growing their company… ....... if you look at the horizon in a lot of developed areas there isn’t a whole lot more coming. ........ Qualcomm also wants to prevent WiMAX from being deployed in India’s 2.3 GHz band ....... “Qualcomm wants to promote TD-LTE over WiMAX in India and they’re willing to put up big money for the auction” ...... India’s total mobile subscriber base is more than 580 million and the country is still working to deploy third generation wireless services on its recently-auctioned 3G spectrum licenses. ...... Qualcomm is taking a similarly proactive approach in China, which is using TD-SCDMA for 3G and TD-LTE for 4G. Qualcomm recently opened its second research and development center in China to help expand its presence in what it called an “increasingly important” wireless market...... China’s wireless market dwarfs that of the U.S. The country’s top operator, China Mobile, has 544.2 million subscribers. The country’s second-largest operator, China Unicom, has 544 million subscribers. By comparison, Verizon and AT&T have wireless subscriber bases of 92 million and 86 million, respectively..... What separates Qualcomm’s strategy from other players in the wireless industry is how proactive it is

Google's Advertising Business

Image via Wikipedia

Job Search
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Has Google Been Able To Scale Well?

Google's advertising business was an after thought for Google. It was not hatched by the two founders and it was at first doubted by the CEO. But Google mints close to 98% of its money from that advertising business. Google invented a new ad platform and has never looked back since. That revenue stream has allowed it to go for a once in a decade IPO, has allowed it to engage in big and bold experiments. That revenue stream has been Google's lifeblood. That ad platform is as simple as search, or at least simple looking.

Google experimented in the traditional online search ad space and found a fit, a great fit. More recently it has experimented with radio and TV with mixed results. Its most recent push been into mobile. It has worked hard on its mobile OS - Android - so as not to charge for that OS, but to serve even more ads on mobile phones. I am a huge fan of ad supported services. It is more egalitarian than charging. Imagine if Google were to charge a few cents per search. You can't.

Google is a big company that retains the spirit of a startup. It looks hungrily at new spaces. It has laid down most of the groundwork for mobile. Right now it is looking squarely at audio and video for the web medium. It is no revelation that it will look to populate those spaces with its lucrative ads. It is not at all a given that it will succeed as wildly and totally as it has in the traditional web space, but there are few people who doubt it will keep iterating until it finds a good fit.

The benefit for the consumer? Services they traditionally paid for will go free. What's there to complain?

Advertising by Google
Google's risky advertising business| ZDNet May 2007
Google Is an Advertising Company August 2005 For all the speculation that Google’s goal is a “web OS” that supplants Windows as the lowest-common denominator platform for getting on the Internet, and for all the talk that Microsoft (and, in particular, Bill Gates) sees Google as a serious threat to their monopoly-powered golden-egg-laying geese, I just don’t see how Google is building a platform for developers that even vaguely competes with Windows. ....... “Follow the money” is as good a way as any to define a company: the point of business is to profit. This is why Apple is not, and has never been, a software company: their profits come from hardware sales — computers, and, now, iPods. Microsoft is a software company: their profits — billions of dollars every quarter — come almost solely from software. ..... Judged by their profits, Google is an advertising company. They don’t profit from search, they don’t profit from software. They profit by selling ads. ..... Google’s software is just an excuse to show ads. Google’s search results and apps like Gmail serve the same purpose as the editorial content in magazines and newspaper.
Updated: Android's Secret Sauce? Google's Advertising Rev-Share Deals With Carriers March 2010 it is sharing advertising revenues with carrier and handset partners, but clarified that it is limited to search and does not extend to other applications, like YouTube or Maps ..... this is good news for carriers, which have been looking for new revenue sources that could help pay for the next generation of networks that will cost billions. ..... mobile advertising is set to take off. Google has agreed to pay $750 million for the mobile ad network AdMob. ...... give away the operating system and make money on advertising ....... Kyocera, which hasn’t made a smartphone in six years, came out of retirement to make its first Android device, a low-end phone that could easily be free with carrier subsidies. ... Google could ship roughly 22 million phones this year.
AdWords - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. Google's total advertising revenues were USD$21 billion in 2008 ...... The original idea was invented by Bill Gross from Idealab who, in turn, borrowed it from yellow pages.
Google AdWords: A Brief History Of Online Advertising Innovation Google’s search advertising model ...... was iterated, and many of the key concepts were borrowed ..... a few key market-defying decisions, and one stunning insight, made it all work ...... Advertising first appeared on Google.com in January 2000 ..... text ads were sold by a sales rep on a CPM basis. (Yes, that’s right, there was no pay-per-click, no self-serve, no bidding.) ...... based on its initial lack of success with advertising, Google had planned to give its inventory over to DoubleClick, the largest banner ad business of the time....... then the bubble burst in Spring 2000, and the online ad banner market crashed....... Google introduced a self-serve model for buying text ads — they got the idea from GoTo.com ..... October 2000, Google introduced AdWords ... “Have a credit card and 5 minutes? Get your ad on Google today.” ...... In 2001, Google’s ad revenue was on pace to hit $85 million, but was outpaced by Overture (the renamed GoTo), which earned $288 million in ad revenue selling pay-per-click ads on an auction basis....... February 2002, Google introduced a new version of AdWords ....... introduced a breathtaking innovation. ...... introduced clickthrough rate, as a measure of the ad’s relevance, into the ranking algorithm. So if an ad with a lower bid per click got clicked more often, it would rank higher....... a lower bid ad with more clicks generated more revenue than a higher bid ad with fewer clicks....... Google had two moments of pure brilliance. ....first was PageRank.... second was introducing relevance into the pay-per-click auction model...... Google didn’t invent search or auction-based pay-per-click advertising — their innovation was perfecting it...... Nobody at the time thought there was anything wrong with Overture’s model — it was making lots of money...... Nobody at the time thought search was a business

Google Predicts Mobile Ad Surge as AdMob Deal Closes , giving the search giant pole position in the emerging wireless advertising space..... the FTC commissioners unanimously voted to close the investigation. ...... its innovation in new ad formats, such as units placed within third-party applications. .... search remains the order of the day for mobile marketers. ..... In the past two years, Google has seen a more than fivefold increase in its mobile search queries, and it's only picking up steam ..... Innovations such as the click-to-call feature found in many mobile search ads make the format more compelling for users, who often use their smartphones to search for local businesses while on the go. ...... as smartphones take on more of the functions of notebooks and desktops ...... mobile ad revenues will eventually eclipse ad sales from the traditional Web on the company's balance sheet.
How Much Is Google Worth to N.Y.? Company Says $6 Billion New York the second-biggest state for Google-driven economic activity, trailing only California, where the company estimates it generated $14 billion in 2009. .... “for every dollar [spent] on Google advertising, an advertiser earns back $2.” ..... the clicks on free searches for businesses in the state, which Google computes are 70% as valuable as clicks on paid search ads. .... the evolution of the “I Love New York” tourism campaign. Five years ago, he said, the state’s effort to lure tourists relied primarily on a toll-free number and brochures. ..... Since adopting AdWords as the cornerstone of its digital presence, the tourism campaign netted 17% of its online traffic through the Google program last year. Davidson credited some $50 million in additional tourism revenue to Google.
Google says it helps generate $54 billion for businesses and nonprofits‎ Google is emphasizing its role in creating jobs and economic development to counter a growing perception on Capitol Hill that it abuses its dominant position in online advertising. ...... "Google is rolling out a marketing campaign to get people to look at them in a more balanced and positive way so they don't get pounded by politicians." .... businesses get five clicks on their search results for every one click on their ads. Based on that, the company calculates that businesses get $8 in profit for every $1 they spend on AdWords.
Google Says It Generates $54 Billion for U.S. Economy The Internet’s share of overall advertising spending is forecast to rise to 17 percent in 2012 from 13 percent last year

Redesigning My Blog

For the longest time I thought that was Google's responsibility. My blog is hosted by Blogger. Google owns Blogger. So it is Google's responsibility. Then weeks back I read this post by Fred Wilson: AVC Redesign. I left the longest, most detailed comment of anyone there. Mostly I disagreed with the basic thrust of what he was saying. Your blog looks good as is, let it be, I said. But a few days later I found myself working on the redesign of my blog.

The number one desire I discovered was I wanted my blog to load as fast as possible. I was surprised that I took out the things I took out. I got rid of the code for Google Analytics. More recently I got rid of Google Ads. I reduced the number of posts on the front page to two from three. I got rid of a whole bunch of things from the right hand column. I got rid of the Amazon ads. I got rid of the Amazon search box. I got rid of the Amazon music box. People don't come to my blog to listen to music. I don't think so. What was I thinking? I was surprised by how much I was able to get rid of.

And the blog started loading faster. It was noticeable. Every split second counts.

Finally today Fred Wilson has done it as well. His blog is now one lean machine. Because fast is not fast enough.

See you on June 6, Fred Wilson, will be my first time meeting in person. After having read so many of your blog posts by now I think I have a right to meet you. And congratulations on winning the Lincoln-Douglas debate at TechCrunch Disrupt. Felt like a trophy for the hometown. (TechCrunch Disrupt, Fat Can Work, But Lean More Often Does)

A New Look For AVC

Paul English Writes Back

I wrote to his official Kayak email address, and he wrote back. He might have copied and posted the body of the email, but he needed to have typed my name. I don't know if you know but Kayak's focus on customer service is legendary. They keep this old school big red phone in the office. Every time a customer calls, they pick and talk. The Kayak engineers themselves reply to every email every customer ever sends them. I just got my first hand experience of that legendary customer service.

Kayak, Paul English, Africa, Free Wireless Internet

Kayak, Paul English, Africa, Free Wireless Internet

OnStartups.com: Startup Insights From Paul English, Co-Founder of Kayak (Via Paul Orlando, @porlando) the most popular travel search site on the web (and one of the top 1,000 most popular sites on the web)..... In Dec 2007, with just 39 employees, Kayak raised $230 million (at a much higher than that valuation) to acquire their largest competitor, SideStep. Paul is on my list of “best entrepreneurs I’ve met”. ...... my next 10 year project. I'll be at Kayak, of course, pushing it, pushing it, but I'm starting a new project that has an audacious goal of creating free low-bandwidth Internet for the whole continent of Africa.
Fast Company: Kayak.com Cofounder Paul English Plans to Blanket Africa in Free Wireless Internet (Via Adam Carson, @adamkcarson) a "big, big project," one that will consume the next decade of his life ..... 8.7% Internet penetration right now ..... belief that providing basic Internet is as essential to society as clean water and clean power. ..... he nonprofit/for-profit hybrid this summer and begin creating partnerships between JoinAfrica and local African for-profit telcos. ...... he's already bought satellite dishes and other gear and helped hook up villages in a number of African countries over the past decade, from Burundi to Uganda and Malawi to Zambia. "Having email and Skype has been transformative for the handful of villages I've worked in," he says. ....... "The continent of Africa has been so fucked over from an economic standpoint -- as an engineer, how do I use my skills to do something that's transformative?" ...... assure the system is "incredibly measurable and incredibly managed." ..... the project might cost billions ..... "The way Kayak is involved is that it's helping make me very wealthy, and I plan to deploy that wealth" ...... massive scale and hybrid business model

This speaks to me. This hits me like when I first read about the Chrome OS. (Chrome Operating System) I have been talking about "an operating system that supports a browser and nothing else, and hardware that supports that operating system and nothing else, something barebones" for a few years now. And I have been talking about "wireless broadband supported by ads" for a few years now. Actually that was my startup that Adam had put 50K of his money into, and 35K of money of people he knew. That money went back to the investors in February 2009 for understandable reasons. I liked the "we still believe in you, we still believe in the vision" parting talk. Lost the investment, kept the friendship. (Ignite, Set It On Fire)

The vision still rings true, only feels more possible due to the Chrome OS. The demand is still there. Billions lack wireless broadband. Heck, most people in America lack wireless broadband. (Job Search) Mobile is great, but you really need that screen size and keyboard size. Global South people are not mini people who can make do with mobile phones alone. Universal broadband will create One World for the first time ever.

Internet access is the voting right for this Internet Century.

Bill Gates thinks the world population will stabilize around nine billion. All countries can be turned into democracies. Poverty can be eradicated. Hunger can be ended. Universal broadband is possible. Big things are possible.

I don't think of the internet as a privilege that people get to access once they get rich enough, so focus on food. Cars, yes, but not the internet. The internet is the catalyst that will make all those other big things possible.

Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures
Hunger, Vision, Money

"A country does not become fit for democracy, it becomes fit through democracy."
- Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize In Economics

Travel, Music

Travel is like music. I never met anybody who did not like music. We no longer live in an era when you needed to be Marco Polo to travel. I have been all over America. I plan on going all over the world. Eventually. I got time. I have sketches in my mind for all India, all Africa, all China travels. You comb the land.

Kayak, Paul English, Africa, Free Wireless Internet

OnStartups.com: Startup Insights From Paul English, Co-Founder of Kayak (Via Paul Orlando, @porlando) the most popular travel search site on the web (and one of the top 1,000 most popular sites on the web)..... In Dec 2007, with just 39 employees, Kayak raised $230 million (at a much higher than that valuation) to acquire their largest competitor, SideStep. Paul is on my list of “best entrepreneurs I’ve met”. ...... my next 10 year project. I'll be at Kayak, of course, pushing it, pushing it, but I'm starting a new project that has an audacious goal of creating free low-bandwidth Internet for the whole continent of Africa.
Fast Company: Kayak.com Cofounder Paul English Plans to Blanket Africa in Free Wireless Internet (Via Adam Carson, @adamkcarson) a "big, big project," one that will consume the next decade of his life ..... 8.7% Internet penetration right now ..... belief that providing basic Internet is as essential to society as clean water and clean power. ..... he nonprofit/for-profit hybrid this summer and begin creating partnerships between JoinAfrica and local African for-profit telcos. ...... he's already bought satellite dishes and other gear and helped hook up villages in a number of African countries over the past decade, from Burundi to Uganda and Malawi to Zambia. "Having email and Skype has been transformative for the handful of villages I've worked in," he says. ....... "The continent of Africa has been so fucked over from an economic standpoint -- as an engineer, how do I use my skills to do something that's transformative?" ...... assure the system is "incredibly measurable and incredibly managed." ..... the project might cost billions ..... "The way Kayak is involved is that it's helping make me very wealthy, and I plan to deploy that wealth" ...... massive scale and hybrid business model

The Dumbo Loft Digital Dumbo

Image representing Andrew Zarick as depicted i...

Image via CrunchBase

So last night I was at my second Digital Dumbo. I even got to say hello to Andrew Zarick, (@a2z) the guy who got me started with Digital Dumbo last month, the organizer. Andrew is from Louisville originally. I have spent a few years in Kentucky. But Louisville is like Kentucky's own New York City. I was in a small town. He might not relate.

The evening was as fabulous as I expected it to be, although the next time I think I am going to pull a Miko Mercer (@mikomercer) and not drink any beer. Only a few days back I learned Ann Curry is half Japanese like Miko. (Ann Curry Commencement)

All beer drinking is obligatory drinking for me. I don't enjoy the process. I enjoy the effect even less. I far more enjoy working the crowd, hopping from one puddle to the next and next.

I paid my compliments, first at my blog in the morning, and then in person to Andrew in the evening. I was 15 minutes late, and still one of the first to show. Digital Dumbo is what the NY Tech MeetUp after party should be, I said.

"I am friends with Nate," he said. If Andrew Zarick is a Louisville guy, Nate Westheimer is a Cincinnati guy. Between them they have all the bases covered. Nate organizes the NY Tech MeetUp. Of course I am familiar with Cincy too. And I am friends with Nate. His is a delightful presence on the local tech scene.

AnyClip.com: More Thoughts
AnyClip.com: Second Thoughts
AnyClip Is Live Now

I really like the Dumbo name, and it can't be all technology, although it is the only geographical locale of its kind in the city. The name Dumbo reminds me of Appu, the mascot for the Asian games in Delhi in 1982.

My family and relatives call me Pappu, not Paramendra. Paramendra is the name they came up with when it was time for me to go to school. And a good name too, totally Google friendly. Elephants and mangoes are so India.

One day a high school friend showed up at our house - my grandfather was out on the verandah - and he made the mistake of asking for Paramendra. He was promptly asked to keep walking down the street. My grandfather did not recognize the name off the bat.

I really appreciated the space. The Dumbo Loft is special. I hope they stick to the venue. They might not have anything better in Dumbo. To a few people I said, this space, and this floor, makes me want to practice my kicks, throw around my lower limbs, try out some basic martial arts.

You had to enter your name on a computer when you got there, and the computer would generate a name for you. Mine was DJ something Dog.

The guy serving beer remembered me from last time. Why not? I was the guy who asked for water.

I liked working the room. I would go from one group of two people to another group of three people, until I was tipsy and no longer effective. I left around 9 PM. Most people had formed small groups around people they worked with, people they showed up with. I'd show up and stir the water a bit.

This event had the healthiest male female ratio of any tech event I have ever been to. How did this happen? I think it was pretty much half and half. That sure was not the case at the last Digital Dumbo. And that sure does not happen at the NY Tech MeetUp. I was impressed but also perplexed. I got into a lengthy conversation with this one woman coder. I asked her why she thought most coders were men. She said, beats me, your guess is as good as mine.

You gotta ask, what is Andrew Zarick's secret sauce?

Pages

Friday, May 28, 2010

India Broadband Spectrum Bids

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Google's Advertising Business

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Redesigning My Blog

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Paul English Writes Back

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Kayak, Paul English, Africa, Free Wireless Internet

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The Dumbo Loft Digital Dumbo

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