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October 18, 2010
Waiting for the Verizon iPhone
Yes, I'm one of the many long-time Verizon customers who would love an iPhone4, but not AT&T service. Some of us have opted for a smartphone running the Android operating system, but Yours Truly continues to cling to his Samsung SCH-u740 in anticipation of the highly-anticipated Verizon CDMA (and probably GSM) capable iPhone4. Will it appear January 2011? Or March 2011, as was suggested by Brian Marshall, an analyst over at Gleacher & Co.? I don't know, but I'm as impatient as the next guy.
The thaw in Apple-Verizon relations has been increasing rapidly, what with both Verizon and AT&T now selling iPads (the Verizon version uses MiFi, not 3G or 4G, but surely that will change in time). AT&T, having lost its exclusivity in selling the iPhone, appears to be a bit upset by all this. However, instead of increasing iPhone publicity to compensate, they appear to be shunning the device, which is a totally bizarre business move. Unless, of course, they realize they can't compete with Verizon. Verizon was probably Apple's first choice for to handle the iPhone, but at the time they weren't interested. Apple was therefore stuck with AT&T, which appears not to have taken the iPhone seriously at first. Many pundits were surprised how many of them were sold initially, the bandwidth demands of which bogged down AT&T's network big time. Perhaps the same will happen with Verizon, though I tend to doubt it. If they put half the effort into expanding their wireless broadband capabilities as they did installing optical fiber for their FiOS TV service, there won't be any problems at all.
Moreover, Verizon is probably easier to deal with than AT&T in certain respects. Here's an analogy: once, years ago, I was talking to a camera store owner who catered to professional. Back in those days when everyone still used film to take photographs, his store switched from carrying Kodak to Fuji film. "Kodak was a real #$@%^ to deal with," he said. I get the impression that Apple fells the same way about AT&T (and vice versa).
By opening up the iPhone to more networks, it will now compete directly with all of the Android devices out there and we will finally see if Apple's technological and marketing genius will triumph.
Meet Walter: SA Forum Unveils New Cartoon Series
The SA Forum (www.saforum.org) or Service Availability Forum was originally called the High Availability Forum when it was founded in 2001. It is a consortium of preeminent communications and computing companies who have joined forces to develop and publish high availability and management software interface specifications. The SA Forum then promotes and facilitates specification adoption by the industry. For example, OpenSAF (www.opensaf.org) is an open source project established to develop a base platform middleware consistent with Service Availability™ Forum
Enterprises spent $1,500 to $2,000 per employee on telecom services in 2008. In a 2,000-employee company, that equates to $4 million. Business thus aiming to decrease telecom spending have decided to transition to VoIP. By doing so, however, savings are often offset by a lack of knowledge of how to support VoIP. Indeed, getting an advanced phone system up to speed and handling any problems that may occur can lead to some considerable expense.
Partly in response to this situation, the Service Availability Forum, focusing on expanding the awareness of service availability-based solutions, has launched a new cartoon series that attempt to demonstrate the critical importance of service availability in our everyday lives. “Walter’s Moments” follows the life of an ill-fated executive faced with many situations where he learns firsthand the costs of using services that do not have five 9’s (99.999%) service availability. In this first cartoon in the series, Walter finds himself at the baggage claim. The SA Forum maintains, “There’s no upside to downtime.”