AT&T signs first “three screens” deal

AT&T inked a content deal with Tim Mcgraw’s “Swampstock 2006″ concert, marking its first “three-screen” content deal for the mobile phone, television and PC platforms. Also, Chase Card Services will sponsor the content across all three platforms. The concert and related elements will appear on AT&T’s blue room website, the AT&T U-Verse and Homezone IPTV service and via Cingular Wireless. Chase’s sponsorship includes banner ads on the blue room portal, air TV spots on U-Verse and Homezone and through wallpaper and voice tones on Cingular’s deck. The programming launches early next month.

This is the first incidence of cross-platform promotional packages we have seen that includes a wireless component. Not to be outdone, Sprint and MobiTV announced today that MobiTV would be providing mobile TV services to Sprint’s cable MSO partners, which will include live and on demand programming from cable television channels, an electronic programming guide and the ability to browse and purchase premium content channels. While the MobiTV release does not mention advertising, I bet their cross platform advertising deal is soon to follow.

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Vonage to resell EarthLink wireless Net service

Internet phone company Vonage said Monday that it plans to use EarthLink’s citywide Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide wireless broadband service along with its voice over Internet Protocol service to customers.

The companies have signed a three-year deal in which Vonage will buy Internet access from EarthLink on a wholesale basis in cities where EarthLink has built a citywide Wi-Fi network. Vonage will then sell the broadband service under its own brand in any market where EarthLink has such a network.

EarthLink has been winning contracts across the country to build these networks, which blanket entire cities using standard Wi-Fi equipment. Service is already available in three markets, Anaheim, Calif., Milpitas, Calif., and New Orleans. The company plans to launch networks in 12 additional markets later this year, including Philadelphia. On Friday, the company announced it had finalized a contract with the city of San Francisco.

While EarthLink sells consumer broadband service directly, its business plan has also always called for it to offer Internet access to other service providers on a wholesale basis.

“As a leader in municipal Wi-Fi networks, EarthLink is committed to open access, which enables other companies to offer their unique services to their customers at consumer-friendly rates,” Donald Berryman, executive vice president of EarthLink and president of the ISP’s municipal networks unit, said in a statement.

Vonage has not specified pricing or launch dates for the service. But the company has said that it will bundle the service with its voice services, which cost $25 a month for unlimited calling within the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and to some European countries. The Vonage Wi-Fi service will allow customers to access the Internet even when they’re outside the home, so long as they are still getting a Wi-Fi signal from the EarthLink network. In the future, Vonage also plans to offer a Wi-Fi phone that can be used anywhere its Wi-Fi broadband service is available.

Wi-Fi is technology that uses unlicensed radio frequencies to provide Internet access wirelessly to enabled computers, laptops, cell phones, and personal digital assistants or PDAs. It’s often found in public places such as airports or coffee shops. The technology is also used widely to create wireless in-home networks.

Vonage has struggled to impress Wall Street investors since it went public in May. But the company, which provides service that lets people turn their existing DSL or cable modem services into phone lines, hopes to expand its market opportunity with the EarthLink deal.

Jeffrey Citron, chairman and chief strategist of Vonage, called the deal “a perfect complement to our platform–helping us reach a greater percentage of consumers and giving them the flexibility and mobility they want.”

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The mobile push email power struggle

These days BlackBerrys and other smartphones seem to be more prevalent than newspapers on the subway. Despite the apparent progress, however, the old metric is still the rallying cry of the mobile email sector: There are approximately 642 million corporate email accounts that have yet to be mobilized, according to Current Analysis. A mere 8 million corporate email accounts, or 1.2 percent of the estimated 650 million accounts have been mobilized, which still leaves a massive market opportunity in the enterprise. Last year saw the emergence of a whole slew of “BlackBerry-killing” wannabes, as the patent lawsuit between NTP and RIM slightly damaged the BlackBerry maker’s dominance in the sector. Good Technology, Intellisync and even Microsoft came out in a big way. Reports continue to circulate that mobile email increases the productivity of a company’s workforce, so 2007 will continue to see the service push its way into more offices.

The new year will see more competition for RIM as many enterprises look to their old mainstay Microsoft for mobile email and consider Good and Intellisync’s solutions more seriously now that Motorola and Nokia have (respectively) acquired those vendors. While some analysts predict Nokia’s success in the enterprise mobile email market will continue to eke forward, its less expensive handsets, like the Nokia E-series smartphones should prove attractive to smaller companies. While costs will always prove a barrier for some companies, others will choose their vendor based on device form factors, touch screens or other user interface characteristics. While I believe Microsoft is set to create a sizable footprint in the sector this year, I think RIM will retain its stranglehold over the Crackberry addicts and remain the dominant force for at least another year.

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Broadcast quality TV will make its debut

Talk about another over-hyped service. Broadcast quality mobile TV has been touted as the savior in 2007. It is predicted to be the catalyst for growth of mobile handsets, customer growth and mobile data consumption. Qualcomm’s MediaFLO, which all of the major U.S. operators appear to be flocking to, will show us exactly what it has in terms of broadcast quality, cost metrics and content deals. Verizon Wireless will be the first to launch this year on the MediaFLO network. In the coming weeks, Qualcomm will announce its first content deals with major TV broadcasters. And as Verizon Wireless prepares for its unveiling, the full scope of the channel lineup, vendor handset deals and market footprint will be revealed.

Meanwhile, Crown Castle’s Modeo will go it alone in New York. It never was able to find a carrier partner, but believes its value proposition is good enough to warrant a launch anyway on unlocked GSM handsets.

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Cell phone coverage holes hurt public safety

This article is the last in a three-part series: Wednesday’s story offered tech tips for wilderness survival while Thursday’s took a look at emerging technologies in car safety. And you can click here for information on how to help the James Kim family.

While most U.S. cities are blanketed with advanced cell phone service at least four times over, huge patches of rural America still don’t have cell phone coverage. What’s more, the problem could get worse before it gets better when rules requiring carriers to offer older, analog service expire early in 2008.

The Federal Communications Commission in 2002 gave the mobile phone industry five years to transition their networks from analog technology to digital technology. Starting in February 2008, cell phone companies will no longer be required to offer analog service.

Cell phone operators have made tremendous strides in their network deployments, providing more than 90 percent of the more than 220 million cell phone subscribers in the U.S. with digital service, according to the CTIA, an industry trade group. But economic realities have meant that some remote areas of the country that have only analog service today may not have any service until carriers can fully upgrade their networks to digital technology.

Concerns about this issue have become increasingly acute because Americans are relying more than ever on their cell phones. According to a recent Consumer Reports survey, roughly 29 percent of people who bought a cell phone in the past year said they did so for emergencies. Unfortunately, lack of cell phone coverage in some of the remotest places in the country can make these devices about as useful as a paperweight.

While only a quarter of the U.S. population lives in a rural area, roughly 75 percent of our country’s geography is rural. Advocates for improving rural cell phone coverage say that the issue should concern not only rural residents, but everyone in the country.

Take the case of the late CNET editor James Kim and his family, who were lost in the Oregon wilderness for more than a week. The Kims were from San Francisco, a city where there are multiple operators offering mobile service. But on a vacation to the Pacific Northwest over the Thanksgiving holiday, the family accidentally found itself on a deserted road, miles from Interstate 5, in bad weather with little to no cell phone coverage.

Fortunately for Kati Kim and her two small children, a two-second cell phone connection that delivered a text message to the Kims’ phone was enough to help engineers and rescue teams locate the family’s stranded car. But for James Kim, who after a week of waiting left his family to seek help, the rescue came too late. He was found dead two days after his family had been rescued.

A national issue
Tragedies such as this one could be avoided if cell phone coverage in remote areas were better, say experts.

“Cell phone coverage is not just a rural issue, but a national issue,” said Tony Clark, president of the North Dakota Public Service Commission. “A trucker from Chicago riding through my state during a blizzard has as much interest in ubiquitous cell phone coverage as someone who lives locally year-round.”

The expiration, or “sunsetting,” of the requirement to provide analog service, which allows cell phone users from any network to roam onto any other carrier’s analog network, could exacerbate this problem. In addition to allowing roaming between networks, analog service also transmits over greater distances than most digital technology. As a result, mobile operators have been able to offer service over larger stretches of geography, such as in the Appalachian Mountains and over the entire Gulf of Mexico.

But analog is not perfect. It uses the wireless spectrum very inefficiently. And it is not capable of providing enhanced 911 (E911) services that would allow emergency operators to get location and phone number information automatically when a 911 call is received.

By contrast, digital mobile technology uses spectrum much more efficiently, allowing operators to offer more advanced services such as e-mail, text messaging, video and music. It uses less power, so devices are smaller and batteries last longer. It’s also capable of providing location information to E911 operators.

“There’s no question that digital is the better technology,” Clark said. “And in a perfect world it would be digital all the way. But the problem is that digital technology isn’t everywhere. So it’s not a choice between digital and analog for some people. It’s a choice between analog and nothing.”

CTIA officials, who represent cell phone operators, said that carriers recognize their own limitations. And even though some may cut off their analog service, many will likely maintain those services in rural regions to make sure customers have coverage.

“The FCC is not requiring that analog goes away,” said Chris Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA. “It just doesn’t require carriers to offer it after February 2008. I’m sure in some rural areas where that’s all that’s available, carriers will offer analog. The last thing a carrier wants is to lose a customer.”

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Do we really need more cell phone taxes?

Ten years ago, when Congress finally passed legislation that pulled down a century’s worth of barriers to competition in the telecommunications industry, 38 million Americans used mobile phones.

Today there are more than 225 million wireless subscribers in America and mobile phones have become a key element of parental peace of mind and workplace productivity.

The impact of cell phones on the national economy is dramatic. According to an independent study produced for CTIA-The Wireless Association, the international industry group for wireless telecommunications, the U.S. wireless industry contributes $92 billion annually to the U.S. gross domestic product and supports 3.6 million jobs. At the current rate of growth, it will become a larger sector of the economy than the automobile industry in five years. The report also projects that the affordability and flexibility of mobile phones will drive productivity gains generating more than $600 billion in additional GDP over the next decade.

Mobile phones have changed the way we live, work and socialize. Competition in the industry has driven down prices, making mobile phones affordable for just about any American with a job. Approximately 1 in 12 households doesn’t even have a traditional telephone landline anymore, relying exclusively on mobile phones to keep in touch.

Unfortunately, the rate of technological innovation in the industry has been matched only by the rate at which elected officials across the country have dreamed up new taxes to impose on wireless subscribers. On average, nearly 17 percent of the typical wireless bill is made up of taxes, fees and surcharges. Who pays? You do. About two-thirds of that amount goes to state and local governments, while the rest goes to Uncle Sam.

By comparison, the average tax rate for other goods and services is only about 7 percent. The services that make us safer and increase productivity are taxed at the highest rates.

This high level of taxation imposes significant costs on wireless subscribers and the economy as a whole. High taxes divert money that would instead go to capital investment and research and development of new technologies to drive future economic growth. Economist Gregory Sidak has calculated that lowering state wireless tax rates to match the general tax rate on businesses would increase U.S. GDP by “between $53.6 billion and $65.6 billion over 10 years.”

The wireless tax burden is also highly regressive. Fees and surcharges make up a much higher percentage of the cost of a $40 monthly plan than a $150 voice and data package. For example, the city of Alexandria, Va., decided to cover a budget shortfall by imposing a 10 percent per line charge on wireless customers. The tax applied only to the first $30 of service, putting relatively more of the burden on low-income families.

To make matters worse, states often don’t even use the money collected by wireless surcharges for their stated purpose. New York increased its statewide fee for emergency 911 services and authorized local jurisdictions to establish their own 911 fees, even though a portion of these funds continues to be diverted away from the 911 system. Rhode Island has done the same, funneling money from the local taxes into the state’s general fund. It is a taxpayer bait-and-switch and enough is enough.

The wireless marketplace is a bright spot in the American economy, but it’s well past time to end the excessive taxation that harms consumer welfare and threatens future innovation.

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A short circuit for cellular E911

It’s very likely that when you call 911 from your cell phone in an emergency, the operator on the other end won’t automatically know your location.

This is despite the fact that most U.S. mobile phone companies have met a Federal Communications Commission mandate to provide location information to 911 operators for millions of wireless subscribers. After years of work, the wireless phone industry is still a long way from full deployment of what is known as enhanced 911 service, or E911.

With the exception of only a few companies, wireless carriers have met obligations set forth by the FCC to get their networks and phones ready to provide the service to 95 percent of their subscribers.

But getting the carriers to support location technology only solves half the problem. The other half requires getting the nation’s 6,140 emergency call centers or Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) outfitted with the technology and databases to make use of this location information. So far, progress on that front is taking longer than many in the safety community had hoped.

About 69 percent of the 6,140 call centers have implemented the final phase for E911, according to the National Emergency Number Association, or NENA, a group that promotes 911 research, planning, training and education. These call centers cover about 80 percent of the U.S. population.

“Significant progress is being made,” said Roger Hixson, technical issues director for NENA. “It could all be happening more quickly, but there are a lot of things to be done to make sure this works. Getting the carriers ready was a long process, and finding the funding and coordinating the local PSAPs is also going to take some time.”

The FCC has mapped out compliance to E911 in two phases. Phase 1 means the caller’s number is displayed for the dispatcher, so the dispatcher can dial back if the call is dropped. Phase 2 means the caller’s approximate location is displayed or mapped so a dispatcher can easily direct emergency personnel.

The FCC estimates that of the 200 million calls made to 911 each year, about a third of them are from callers using a mobile phone. In many communities, over half of 911 calls are placed from cell phones. With more than 220 million wireless subscribers in the nation, it makes sense that a growing number of emergency calls would come from cell phones. Roughly 30 percent of people who bought a cell phone in the past 12 months did so for emergencies, according to Consumer Reports.

Making sure that call centers are ready to accept location information for these emergency calls is critical, say experts. Callers using wireless phones are more likely than callers from a landline phone to not know where they are when they’re calling for help.

Even though many state and county governments know the rewards of implementing such systems quickly, it can be difficult to come up with the money and navigate the politics to make sure the implementation happens.

Hixson said upgrading a single PSAP to accept calls with location information could cost between $150,000 and $200,000. If databases that hold information about local highways or the area’s topography haven’t been built and correlated with other emergency databases, the cost could soar to $1 million per PSAP, he said.

As of October, every state except Missouri had passed legislation to fund E911 deployment and maintenance. This compares with five years ago when 10 states did not have funding in place for E911.

But even with most states’ E911 funding in place, it will take time before the funds are built up enough to begin upgrades. The way E911 funding works is that states approve a tax or a surcharge attached to wireless customers’ bills. Without legislative approval, this tax often can’t be levied.

Once the funds are in place it can still take over a year to implement the technology, Hixson said. First, local officials need to spend three or four months planning the implementation. Then it could take another four to six months to actually put the technology in place and test it.

Some PSAPs are operated and staffed by local police and fire departments, while others are run by counties. The success of these implementations is largely due to how well agencies within the county and state cooperate. Ultimately, this affects how quickly states are able to roll out services.

For example, North Dakota was one of the first states to have E911 fully implemented throughout the state. But its neighbor South Dakota is lagging. In fact, state officials there recently commissioned a $50,000 study to examine the state’s 911 services, according to a recent Associated Press story.

“We were very fortunate to have an association of counties working on this issue early and making the commitment to have E911 up and running,” said Tony Clark, president of the North Dakota Public Service Commission. “They created a very strong, centralized program. But I know it can be tough to get this done. It takes a lot of political will.”

Because of these issues, it’s difficult for people to know when they can expect emergency dispatchers to know their location when they call 911 for assistance. Experts say the best thing to do is to assume that the call center will have no information about your location.

“Most people don’t care about 911 until they have to use it,” Hixson said. “And when they want to use it, the expectation is that E911 will be universal. But the truth is, we’re still years from that.”

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Verizon: We already have Rev. A up and running

While Sprint Nextel has been quite vocal about its market rollouts of EV-DO Rev. A, Verizon Wireless says that it has had a number of markets lit up with Rev. A for a few months now. The company expects to introduce a PC card in the coming weeks, but it won’t officially announced its Rev. A launch until it has a significant number of markets up and running. I like the PR game carriers like to play when they rollout new technology: Some, like Sprint, like to keep announcing a handful of markets to keep reminding you how fast they are rolling out. Then others, like Verizon Wireless, like to make a big splash by lighting up a large swath of markets, in order to claim that they were really the ones ahead!

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Green thumb good, BlackBerry thumb bad

Color associated with your thumb can have a positive association. After all, having a “green thumb” means that you are deft at gardening and yielding bountiful harvests of vegetables.

But these days, when you put in your thumb and a pull out a BlackBerry, you may mutter “what a sore thumb have I.” Indeed, “Blackberry thumb” may be joining our modern-day vocabulary, as did “tennis elbow” some time ago.

According to a recent report by the American Physical Therapy Association, handheld electronic devices like Research In Motion’s BlackBerrys, Palm’s Treos and Danger’s Sidekicks are rapidly becoming a source of chronic pain and injury for device users.

Handheld devices can lead to repetitive-stress injury, which can cause pain and numbness in the thumbs and hand joints, as noted by Margot Miller, the President of APTA’s Occupational Health Special Interest Group. She points out that this results from people spending far too much time using their handheld devices for sending e-mails and instant messages, and for surfing the Internet for work and personal reasons.

Miller explains that handheld-device abusers are more likely to develop physical problems. These are people who use their devices at least several times a day for more than short periods of time. Symptoms can include swelling, throbbing and tendonitis. Furthermore, overuse of handheld devices can aggravate underlying conditions such as arthritis.

In the world of portable devices, smaller has been deemed better, in terms of the convenience of not having to lug around bulky equipment. However, there obviously is a price for smallness. The keyboards on handheld devices are quite tiny, and much thumb use is required–yet the thumb is the least dexterous part of the hand, as notes Miller. Thus, the risk of thumb injury increases exponentially.

So what are handheld device users to do? Besides taking a break and smelling the real-world roses once in a while (which your columnist highly recommends), employers can train employees in terms of best ways to hold and use handheld devices. Employers can also encourage employees to send only short e-mails on their devices. Employers have an incentive in this regard, as they want a healthy and able work force, and they want to minimize their own potential liability with respect to employees who have been injured by working on employer-provided handheld devices.

Miller advises people to pay close attention to what their bodies are telling them. For example, if you start feeling pain in the thumb area, treatments such as icing, stretching, using a properly fitted thumb splint and even getting cortisone injections can be warranted under various circumstances. Miller states that surgery sometimes is necessary.

Of course, it’s better to head off a problem becomes it becomes serious. Miller recommends that upon the onset of symptoms, a handheld-device user should seek out a physical therapist. And apparently, some resorts now are offering hand massages to soothe the aches and pains caused by handheld-device use.

I can assure you that no thumbs were damaged in the creation of this piece, as it was typed on a full keyboard in front of a computer screen and not on a handheld device.

Biography
Eric J. Sinrod is a partner in the San Francisco office of Duane Morris. His focus includes information technology and intellectual property disputes. To receive his weekly columns, send an e-mail to ejsinrod@duanemorris.com with “Subscribe” in the subject line. The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of Sinrod’s law firm or its individual partners.

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