DSL Prime: The iPod Phone

The iPod telephony firmware, the smackdown on municipal broadband by the EU, DSL in Samoa, and other news.

by Dave Burstein of DSL Prime and Future of TV [July 24, 2006]

iPod Phone in the firmware
Video iPod soon to drive traffic
From a "VL-Tone" post at Apple Insider, enough data to make clear Apple is investing in telephony. Steve Jobs could just strike a $19.95 deal with Craig McCaw's Clearwire, or otherwise create disruption.

"I found these very interesting text strings in the latest iPod nano Firmware updater. The file is called Firmware-14.5.2 and is found inside the 2006-6-28 iPod updater package. Could this be enough to confirm an iPod phone based on the iPod OS?

t_feature_app_PHONE_APP, kPhoneSignalStrength, clPhoneMocksApplication, clPhoneCallModel, clPhoneCallHistoryModel, prPhoneSettingsMenu, prPhoneSettingsMenuView, prPhoneEnableSetting, prPhoneMenuItem

These are definitely not from the Motorola phones, as they are running a completely different OS. These are also not from the contact and address lists features that can contain phone numbers.

Now if it weren't enough, look what I found too, just after the phone references:

t_feature_app_MESSENGER_APP, clMessengerModel, clMessengerApplication

A messenger application to go with the phones I guess?"

First reported by John Paczkowski in the Merc's Good Morning Silicon Valley e-mail. Worth a subscription just for the funny headlines.

Stories I'm watching:

• Telfonica, QSC/Tele2 lighting 2,000 German exchanges
• Brisbane, Australia wants fiber instead of Telstra
• The cost of streaming: $0.25 To Stream a DVD Quality Movie,
• $0.80 for HD, $0.05 for iPod or AOL TV shows
• France: Euro a day for computer and DSL
• Verizon's 20 percent unserved in Boston
• Dynamic BPON for 50 Mbps
• Houlin Zhou at ITU leaving. (Friends, please send comments)
• False earnings at self-devouring telcos
• Alcatel/AT&T struggles
• Pickups from Susan Crawford, danah boyd, Martin Geddes
• If Alcatel dumped Lucent, or AT&T BellSouth
• USF ripoffs in Iowa and Puerto Rico may sneak through the FCC
• Will Congress add 160 staffers if the FCC replaces state wireless rules
• AT&T's satellite alternative: Separate, not equal, but not that bad

Newsbreak as I go to press: Nellie Kroes at the EU has issued a potentially disastrous opinion that appears to stop a Dutch municipal fiber to the home build. She claims it is an inappropriate public subsidy, and unnecessary because the town already has "broadband." MIT's Dave Clark and the "wise men" of the NRC committee eloquently explained why the definition of broadband needs to evolve as technology improves. 100 Mbps symmetric fiber is far beyond the 1 Mbps upstream, ten Mbps downstream currently available. I've pasted in the press release at the end. Chris at DSL Reports is the first to report the story in North America.

DSL to Samoa
Huawei servicing islands of 180,000
Samoatel is deploying ADSL2+ for metro customers, as two other ISPs take away Samoatel dial-up customers. Huawei is providing the gear, as well as a $5 million mobile EDGE network that will reach 95 percent of the population. Since 2003, has gone from 12,000 fixed lines and 4,000 mobile customers to 20,000 fixed lines and 26,000 mobile. 25 percent of the population have phones.

Copyright 2006 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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