I am a real fan of Skype and Boingo services.  They offer an option  called Skype zones that enables me to connect from my laptop to the web from  different places all over the world  for 7.95$ per month. I have been using this service since 2006, paying the same price, and being permitted to use Skype and data services (e.g., browsing, email). Certainly a great deal have been made that perfectly answers my needs.Just a bit of history: in 2005, Skype and Boingo launched the Skype zones service.
“The service is being initially offered at $8 a month for unlimited Wi-Fi access for Skype calls, which is significantly less than the $22 a month that Boingo currently charges for unlimited data access.”

The underlines are mine. The tricky part is that the Skype zones did not limit me (or other users as I know) from using it with data services. I could never conceive what made the difference between the two services ($8 service and the $22 service) apart from the price.

On this subject, I just got an email from Boingo saying:

“Effective February 1, 2009, Boingo and Skype will discontinue the Skype Zones Unlimited service. But don’t worry - you can continue using Wi-Fi with Boingo!” 
They were nice enough to offer me a similar (meeting my purposes) service: 

“Boingo Global offers access to more than 100,000 hotspots in over 90 countries. This flat-rate plan costs $59 USD per month …”

Actually I found some little differences between the new and old services. The new service price is more than 6 times the price of what I am paying to Skype zones today, and almost 3 times the $22 USD Boingo were charging for “the none Skype zones” similar service in 2002, or 1.5 times $39 USD Boingo used to charge for a similar service, just a few months ago.

What can I tell you? I hope that this is a sign of prosperity of the world and telecom industry! At $59 per month it does not make sense for my needs. I hope that some company will come with a more sensitive plan for me, e.g. access for 30 roaming days per year.Skype is still advertizing a Skype zones service for €7.95.
Will it continue after February 1^st? Will this service be really restricted only to enable just Skype calls, and no data services? Answers will be provided next month. Meanwhile let’s just be happy that the economical prosperity permits to triplicate prices of some communication services

iphone is the talk of the town, there is no question about it. While everybody is  busy upgrading their devices, the Mobile Phone killer application for me is still an Alarm Clock. However I should recognize that some people have a different view and many are interested in Iphones.In the past, the Apple income from iPhones was based on a revenue share business model: getting a percentage of the revenues originated from the iPhones traffic.
On October 2007, the New York Times  reported about the revenue share deal between Apple and AT&T. On August 2007, the Financial Times reported about a similar deal with T-Mobile of Germany, Orange of France and O2 of UK.  Time passed and somewhere on the way the Apple Business model changed. Apple partially abandoned the revenue-sharing model  (see 1, 2, 3)  and passed  to a more traditional model where iPhones were sold to Service Provider in full price, and the Service Providers subsidized iPhones to their end customers.

Saul Hansell, the editor of the New York Times Bits blog, says in his blog that “Subsidies of $200 to $300 per advanced handset are common in the industry”. O2 UK prices are a good source to learn about the subsidy. O2 offers the following plan: get a free 8GB iPhone just commit to a 18 month plan for £45 per month, the same Iphone is offered at £342.50 to O2 prepaid customers at apple UK web store.
Therefore since the Service Providers take a substantial risk per handset, they have to ensure their margins; the common way of getting it is to commit their customers to 1- or 2-year plan. It can be risky; the operator that gives a significant subsidy per Iphone might lose money in case the buyer of the handset manages to avoid the long-term commitment. It’s even riskier if buying of the subsidized handset is separated from the activation and commitment to the plan. Today the AT&T site let you buy your subsidized Iphone at a third party retail shop, e.g., Walmart, and then activate it via the web, selecting and committing to the plan only at the activation time. Of course, this approach relies on the possibility to enforce the activation of the subsidized handset only at the subsidizer’s network, and only after getting the customer’s commitment to a long-term plan. However the risk is high and I can easily imagine 3 scaring scenarios:

1. The customer fails the credit check, he cannot commit to the long-term post paid plan. In the past such customers were given two options: to give a deposit or prepay. The second option increased the risk of losing subsidy by the Service Providers. It seems that today this loophole is blocked by AT&T.

2. The Service providers for sure lose their subsidies if a customer decides to deliberately beat the system: e.g., to use the new iPhone with an old Sim card engaged in a cheaper plan or even worse, to buy an iPhone and use it with a competitor company. It is true that both options require some hacking that might be illegal (I am not sure), but more and more sites are reporting on the ways how to do it (for obvious reasons, no links here).

3. Someone (a dealer, an employee of the dealer, a customer, etc.) starts to buy large volumes of subsidizes iPhones, unlocks them and sells the unlocked Iphones abroad at reduced prices, causing the service provider significant losses.

I hope that all the Service Providers that are or will adopt the marketing strategy of separating the sale of the subsidize handset from the activation and the commitment to the plan processes, are aware of these risks, and take the necessary measures to monitor and mitigate them.

I planned to find some interesting statistics about RA on the web for the year 2008. Unfortunately I didn’t find anything that is solid. However, going through the web trying to find the desirable data, reminded me that there are few  basic rules to be followed when conducting a research and investigation that of course apply when it comes to RA.
 

I wish you all great 2009, I hope you will enjoy this short anecdote, and remember to use it to recall the basics.

The TMF published in the Appendix A of TR131 v2, the number of pages found by search engines (aka hits), for several RA related terms, such as “Revenue Assurance” AND provisioning  in year 2004 (using yahoo) and in 2007 (using Google).I thought it would be interesting to repeat the test, using Google.

The first result that I obtained was quite surprising; in December 2007 according to TR131, “Revenue Assurance” generated 518,000 hits. Surprisingly enough in December 2008 it generated only 323,000 hits. I believed that the difference in the figures does not mean that people lost their interest in RA.

My assumption was that the reason for the gap in the figures is due to some change in the way Google is calculating hits. However, I was not able (using Google) to find any justification, or contradiction to my assumption It was clear to me that I should not rely on the number of hits to analyze changes from previous years.

Therefore I decided to look at another parameter -  the change over the years in the ratio between the number of hits of “Revenue Assurance” together with some terms  like provisioning or mediation or leading to the number of hits of “Revenue Assurance” alone.

Looking at this yield some interesting results: the number of hits including both terms “Revenue Assurance”  and “leading” was 319,000; the number of  hits of “Revenue Assurance”  together with “rating” was 319,000. The coincidence in the numbers was a bit surprising so I googled to see the number of hits pages that include the 3 terms “Revenue Assurance”   and “leading” and  “rating“. Surprise, surprise  319,000.  Now I was puzzled, it did not make sense that in ~99% of the pages in which “Revenue Assurance”  appears, also “leading” and  “rating” appeared.

I went one step further checking how many hits I get for pages in which “Revenue Assurance” appears  but “rating” does not appear and the result was 274,000. Combining the number of “Revenue Assurance”  and “rating” (319,000.) + the Number of Revenue Assurance”  and not “rating”  (274,000)= should give me the total number of  hits with “Revenue Assurance ” (323,000) Clearly enough I proved beyond any doubt that  319,000 + 274,000 = 323,000 J. Now seriously, Google number of hits is only estimation ( ref1), however, the estimation, at least in our case, wasn’t good enough to do any significant deduction. 

It was time to give a chance to other search engines;

I proved there some new mathematical theorems

MSN:  43,100,000 = 46.600 + 42,100,000
Asks:  114,200 = 57,600 + 105,800
Yahoo 2,470,000 = 495,000 + 2,250,000  Clearly I could not use these numbers to yield any significant conclusion regarding RA. Well my short investigation reminded me of some really basics rules that we all tend to forget from time to time. Always have them in mind they can be the difference between doing an outstanding job and making a fool of yourself. 

1.     Always distinguish between facts, calculations, and estimations
2.     Do not trust numbers always double check them, and always apply sanity checks
3.     Coincidences exist, but many times they are not coincidences
4.     The real meaning of a number is not necessarily what you want it to mean
5.     Information even if it come from serious sources can be completely incorrect
6.     It is better to admit that you cannot deduce something, than to deduce something without solid foundation

Have a great 2009, and if I may quote Monty Python, in today’s situation remember to always look at the bright side of lifeGadi