More Signal. Less Noise.
My posts have been syndicated to Seeking Alpha (SA), an excellent site that aggregates blog content from all over the web, since early this year. Many of my readers first found this site through SA.
Continue reading ‘The Nyquist Condition - Now on Yahoo! Finance’
It’s official. Looks like Cortina acquired a digestible portion of Intel’s (INTC) comm semi product line, forgoing the network processors that would bring high SG&A overhead. They focused on the parts they could plug into the company to generate cash flow.
FSAN has completed their first GPON interoperability testing. Interoperability of GPON systems is important, since the ITU standard ultimately should yield systems that interface more smoothly than the loosely defined GE-PON specification.
There is an excellent discussion about Cisco’s practice of locking out competition for optical modules at Lightreading. (Original post here)
The results of the poll Lightreading is running are shown below.
Website went down yesterday from 6PM to 9PM EST. Issues should be addressed this weekend as the site moves to a new hosting provider.
How Cisco built a billion dollar business built on the backs of their optical module suppliers, and how this business has fueled the majority of their earnings growth.
This is a developing story. This post will change as I learn more.
It appears Cortina Systems will purchase and operate the communication semiconductor assets of Intel (INTC).
OK, since I’ve been called out by Om Malik, I’m going to let rip with a stream-of-conciousness monologue on optical. No backspace key, no delete key, spelling corrections ex-post-facto. Here goes.
Dealbreakers take on Google CEO Schmidt joining Apple’s board of directors is too funny not to share, and conveys an attitude that should be applied to every announcement Google makes.
Vitesse Semiconductor Corp (VTSS) is mentioned yet again in today’s WSJ. Bondholders are descending on companies who have failed to file financial statements with the SEC due to options backdating investigations. Technically, these companies are in default and bondholders can demand immediate repayment. If the company cannot pay, they could be forced into bankruptcy.
I just discovered that Global Crossing (GLBC) has an excellent corporate blog that is admirable for it’s lack of corporate-speak and full-frontal opinion.
Niall Ferguson’s paper caught my attention. He investigates how investors mispriced bond market risk in the years leading up to World War One- bond market yields fell and risk premiums shrunk right up to one week prior to the start of hostilities.
Apple (AAPL) has come under fire for using sweatshop labor to assemble your precious iPod.
Seeking to avoid the PR disaster faced when Nike’s manufacturing facilities were profiled in the early 90’s, Apple launched an investigation and issued a preliminary report. Some excerpts are worth sharing in order to understand the scale of outsourced Chinese manufacturing.
A final injunction has been handed down by the Texas court handling the Tivo-Echostar patent infringement case. Echostar will not only pay $89M in cash damages, but will also have to disable nearly all customer DVR’s in the field within 30 days.
In a press release, Echostar will now appeal at a federal level. They also indicate that existing customers are not impacted by this court order, even though a scan of the court order clearly shows that they must cease operating all but 100k+ of their DVRs. That’s right, they need to settle or shut down all of their customer DVRs.
The WSJ today has an exclusive look (free version of article here) at a report to be released by CableLabs that outlines the potential need for cablecos to undertake a massive infrastructure upgrade in order to stay competitive. Unfortunately, the report is not yet available to non CableLabs members, though we would sure like to get our hands on one (HINT HINT HINT) and CableLabs has informed me it never will be.
The report, which has been reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, warns that at present growth rates cable operators’ existing technology may not be able to compete efficiently with Verizon on Internet services. “At some point, optimization of the (cable) network becomes more expensive than simply deploying” fiber directly to homes, the report warns.
The WSJ discusses (free link) Googles (GOOG) push to mend fences with content owners and creators and strike advertising revenue sharing deals. Google is the undisputed efficiency and size leader of connecting on-line advertisers with on-line consumers, with the exception of Yahoo! in banner advertisement.
Akamai Technologies Inc. (AKAM) is the undisputed leader (80% share) of content distrubution infrastructure. When you stream video or iTunes, it is probably coming from an Akamai server and not NBC or Apple. Akamai simply takes bits from one of it’s customers, like NBC, and ensures a quality viewer experience. NBC puts the ads into or around the video you watch.
No one, as of yet, has really started to successfully implement user-targeted video advertisements. Brightcove is trying to do this, but most online video advertisements are sold by the content creators themselves. If you watch the Sci-Fi channel online, you see ads that NBC sold to it’s existing advertising partners. In the web world, most sites outsource the selling of ad space on their sites to Google, Yahoo, etc.
It is this transition that will catalyze an inevitable conflict between Akamai and Google.
Continue reading ‘The Inevitable Competition of Akamai and Google’
Businessweek writes about T-mobile and a new service they are rolling out using UMA phones (dual GSM/WiFi). These new mobile phones make use of the WiFi network and broadband connection in a users home to make phone calls off the GSM or cellular network.
Contrary to popular opinion, the real threat to the baby bells residential phone business is not the cableco’s VoIP but wireless substitution. Competition from cell phones was eating away at residential lines long before the cablecos began deploying voice services.
Most baby bells already have a wireless infrastructure. None of the cablecos do. This is why the Baby Bells ultimately have the upper hand over the cableco in the battle for residential subscribers. They can migrate their customers (and their phone numbers) to a wireless infrastructure, and Comcast (CMCSA) / Cablevision (CVC) /Time Warner (TWX) cannot. Comcast can migrate customers to Sprint/Nextel (S ), but without owning the infrastructure they won’t extract maximum value.
Wireless is the commanding heights and the most important infrastructure to own and operate in a voice network. Everything else is a commodity.
New Jersey recently passed a law allowing carriers to negotiate municpal video franchise agreements at the state level. This removes the uncertainty involved with multiple negotiations with multiple municipalities demanding multiple perks.
I witnessed the process first-hand by attending a local municpal hearing in MA for Verizon (VZ) FiOS TV service (see Blogging a FiOS TV Franchise Meeting). It is a pathetic process designed to extort tribute from companies while delaying the advent of competition for consumers.
It looks like municipalitites in New Hampshire will now reap what they sow.
From the Portsmouth Herald:
Jill Wurm (Verizon spokeperson) said this week that the company has sent equipment and franchise negotiators intended for New Hampshire to New Jersey, where a single franchise agreement can be negotiated at the state level.
Verizon would have to negotiate with each of the 23 New Hampshire communities in which it has installed fiber optic cable and pay them a franchise fee.
“So, since that’s the mode of operation in New Hampshire, everything … got reallocated,” Wurm said.
… and citizens of those 23 towns will lack effective cable competition in the meantime.
Activism in technology stocks is long overdue and it is refreshing to see it taking root. Robert Chapman is turning his attention to a company in a sector in dire need of external consolidation forces.
Continue reading ‘WSJ Profiles Robert Chapman, Vitesse Activist’
Centillium Communications (NASDAQ CTLM) has a troubled past and present but the market has mispriced even the most pessimistic scenarios at this point, short of accounting fraud. With proper investor activism this value could be extracted through consolidation, liquidation, or private turnaround scenarios.
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