Author Archives: billbennettnz

About billbennettnz

Writer, editor, publisher - based in New Zealand.

Shifting power of technology brands

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Technology Brands

The Economist charts 2013′s most powerful global brands and the biggest risers.

Technology firms dominate with Apple taking top slot. No surprise there.

Google is second. Likewise no surprise.

IBM is in third place just a tad behind Google – that’s curious.

AT&T is just an American thing, while China Mobile mainly matters in just one big country.

Which brings us to Microsoft. In seventh place it is still one of the world’s most valuable brands, but clearly behind Apple and Google. This roughly squares with the three companies’ performance in delivering technology to consumers and their relative positions in the mobile device market.

IBM is an outlier. It remains a powerful business-to-business brand, yet the company barely features in technology news reports and hardly touches everyday consumers. Moreover, IBM is a non-combatant in the mobile device game.  Does this mean journalists like me and readers like you should take more notice of IBM?

Samsung features in the biggest risers table growing more than 50% in the past year. Even if it can keep up that pace – which is unlikely – it will be a years before it features as one of the most valuable brands. However, the company is moving onto the radar as a major technology player. Again, this reflects the company’s performance.

New Zealand’s world class broadband – Stevezone

Engineer Steve Biddle’s post at Geekzone is a breath of fresh air.

It is often too easy to lose sight of all the good things we have. In NZ. The home of world class broadband he reminds us that we are well served by telecommunications providers. Biddle also points out how far ahead of Australia we are.

This is something I constantly think about in my work. Part of my day involves monitoring Australian technology publications, Day after day I see how ridiculous things are when ideology and politics get in the way of building a telecommunications network.

Biddle also makes a good point about home wiring being important. I’ve had my wiring checked and fixed twice in the last three years – it makes a huge difference to broadband performance. So does being ready to spend a little money. Skimping is not worth it.

If you’re at all interested in the internet and communications, read Biddle’s post.

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Can Tumblr make Yahoo hip again?

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Yahoo was a name to conjure with in 1997 when I was editing the Australian NetGuide.

It sat near the centre of many people’s internet experience. That’s no longer the case.

In the time before Google, Yahoo’s directory was a popular jumping-off point for finding web content. Google sucked all the air out of that business and the rest is history.

Yahoo remains one of the more popular online destinations – especially in the US. Today it is mainly a content portal with strength in a handful of areas including sport and entertainment news. And it owns the popular Flickr photo-sharing site.

But Yahoo can’t honestly be described as hip or happening. Hell, I’m past 50 and it looks fogyish even to me. And the company’s revenue has been in decline while its online rivals continue to grow.

Tumblr on the other hand is hip. And happening. It is very much of today. And it is popular with a younger audience than most of Yahoo’s current fare.

So spending over a billion dollars on the business could make sense. Most observers expect Yahoo to find ways to make money from Tumblr – until now it has barely paid its way.

Yahoo’s challenge is to parlay all it gains from Tumblr back into the mothership without killing the hipper, younger brand. The company will want Tumblr users to link to its content channels and advertising is going to play a bigger role on their sites whether they like it or not.

Presumably part of the goal is for the lively social media blogging site to pump some adrenaline back into the Yahoo brand. There are some lucrative big data opportunities lurking in this mix as well as all those hip young things leave trails across the webs for Yahoo’s servers to mine.

The danger is that Yahoo will stifle Tumblr. That would be like watching a billion dollars flushed down the gurgler.

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Australia’s dysfunctional fibre v wireless debate

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Thankfully New Zealand doesn’t echo Australia’s ridiculously politicised telecommunications scene.

Across the Tasman, those on the right of the political spectrum take every opportunity to dismiss government plans to build the NBN – a fibre to the premises network. Meanwhile, some NBN supporters are just as fanatical.

Things took a turn for the surreal when Australians learnt of Samsung’s 5G announcement. The company demonstrated 28GHz band wireless technology capable of delivering data at multi-gigabit rates.

The NBN’s opponents leaped on this news as evidence the fibre roll-out is a waste of time. NBN’s supporters were quick to dismiss those arguments and claim wireless data will never move beyond being an also ran technology.

As is often the case with Australian communications debates, there is more heat than light.

Where consumers have a choice – Japan is the most obvious example – wireless data networks inhibit fibre uptake. But then NBN supporters point out users share wireless bandwidth and it is impractical for high-speed applications.

Or maybe not. Samsung’s 5G…

…it will not be your grandfather’s “shared and congested” wireless, given the antenna theory behind 5G essentially mimics a point-to-point network.

- Grahame Lynch writing in CommsDay

The 28Ghz band is line-of-site and, apparently, difficult to work with. Samsung’s demo delivered 1Gbps, but only over 2 kilometres. In other words a practical 5G network means a lot of fibre will be laid to cell towers. Along the way it will pass a lot of homes and businesses.  So to some extent, a 5G roll-out could complement a fibre roll-out in New Zealand where Chorus connects homes and cell towers.

Australia’s market is so comprehensively distorted by the government’s NBN project that the prospects for any alternative network are effectively at the government’s whim. If 5G really challenged NBN, officials could simply strangle it in its infancy with a little careful policy bastardry.

New Zealand’s telecommunications market isn’t perfect, but when it comes to politics intersects with technology, few here steal jealous glances across the Tasman.

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Chorus’ brilliant VDSL gambit

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From June 7 Chorus will sell VDSL on its copper network at the same price as ADSL.

The clue to why this is a smart move lies in the technology’s full name: Very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line. VDSL speeds are noticeably higher than today’s ADSL services.

Theoretically, VDSL download speeds top out at 50Mbps, although to get the full benefit you need to be relatively close to an exchange or roadside cabinet. Typically users can expect to see two or three times today’s ADSL download speeds if they switch.

But that’s not the whole story. VDSL upload speeds are many times faster than ADSL upload speeds. Typically New Zealand users upload at less than 1Mbps, VDSL can upload at 16Mbps, but users will more realistically see 5 to 10Mbps.

In practice, you’ll notice the faster upload speed the first time you attempt to send a large file. Higher upload speeds will make a huge difference to people using cloud computing, social media and video applications. Gamers like it too.

The gamble could potentially pay huge dividends for Chorus on two counts as it continues its nationwide fibre to the premises roll-out.

First, VDSL will get users hooked on fast internet services like videoconferencing and keep up interest on speedy services during the six or so remaining years it will take for the UFB network to reach all urban areas.

Second, it will get people hooked on fast land-line services. This matters because overseas experience shows wireless broadband services challenge fibre uptake in places where consumers have a clear choice. Fast wireless internet will reach most urban areas much sooner than the UFB, so VDSL effectively diminishes competitive threat.

As a byproduct, VDSL will also encourage service providers to focus on high-end UFB plans. VDSL speeds will be close to the 30Mbps offered in low-end UFB plans.

Chorus says it will stop selling new VDSL connections in areas where the fibre network is completed.

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