Profit warning coming at France Telecom?

According to La Tribune Orange France is underperforming, which may induce France Telecom to (once again) lower its revenue forecast.

Right now, guidance is for 7% (2% organic) and the market is looking for 6.7%. So there is some downside here.

Wednesday Telecom, Internet and Media Digests

The past week saw numerous announcements. Here are the most important ones - from the investor point of view. Discover the many links to primary source material and commentators. Each overview is divided into company specific news and trends by segment.

Telecoms: to name a few:

• Regulatory actions in Canada (foreign ownership), the US (the new COPE Act) and the EU (international roaming).
• Standards news on Bluetooth/UWB, WiMAX (certifications) and MoCA (in-home wiring).
• LBS search services from Skyhook and Sprint.
• Innovative VoIP from Lycos, Jajah and Interoute.
• Of particular interest: xMax (handsets) and Skype (sued by StreamCast).

Internet: mainly Google and Yahoo!:

• New video search from Podzinger.
• Ad insertions into SMS from MIVA.

Media: cable and video:

• Company news mainly from cablecos (US, France, Israel).
• Most of my favorite video companies in the news: Sling Media, Akimbo, Dave.tv and VideoEgg.

No bid for NTL, but maybe for BT

Informed sources tell me there is no bid looming for NTL right now. There could be penalties for unwinding existing financing and the Virgin Mobile takeover is complicating the matter, as it is too far advanced to undo.

Earlier rumours about private equity approaching BT were denied by the latter. However, the same sources tell me that BT has now rejected a plan according to which the company would be split along the current divisional lines (Global, Retail, Wholesale). That leaves the possibilty of an hostile bid (not likely, I believe) or a full takeover bid (the size of which now seems less and less relevant).

KT Corp: example to the world

The Korea Herald has an article on KT Corp, centering on its VDSL, FTTH and IPTV deployments (or plans).

A new market for PayPal: mobile payments

PayPal (eBay) will launch PayPal Mobile in a couple of weeks. A text message (SMS) or a voice call (IVR) can be used to transfer funds. It can be used for person-to-person payments or for buying stuff. The 'text to buy' feature would allow magazine readers to buy an item using a code in an ad. The item will be shipped to the address tied to the phone, which must be registered at PayPal.

Looks really easy and it must be a potentially fairly big market.

MIVA extends sponsored search to SMS

MIVA will provide its advertisers with the possibility of inserting ads into SMS messages. These text messages are sent by partner The Number (the UK operator osf the famous 118 118 directory service) to its clients, in response to enquiries. The service is called TXT//AD.
A trial among 500 users showed that the majority was interested in the possibilities this delivers to end users.

I'm not sure how large this market is, but it is interesting to see how the web version (organic search results augmented with sponsored results) is extended into an entirely different environment. Also, conversion and ROI will be high and there is no chance for click fraud.

Wednesday Telecoms, Media and Internet Digests

Highlights from last week in:

Telecoms:
Lots of M&A activity, regulatory actions.
News from Vyyo (cable broadband) and Agilent (cellular mesh networking).
AT&T and Embarq/Sprint jumping on the muniwifi bandwagon.
WiMAX and IPTV developments.

Internet:
Amazon.com and Google into financial services.
Web 2.0 is alive again.
The FCC, AT&T, Qwest and Disney on Net Neutrality.

Media:
Open access news: in STM publishing, music distribution (iTunes) and TV sports programming.
Please make up your mind: do you want cellphones in movietheaters (for interactive games) or not (would you please shut up).
Video distribution: to PCs, the TV or to portable players.

Brill Academic Publishers: the case for Google Book

Brill, the tiny B2B publisher form Leiden (the Netherlands), last night published its 2005 results.
Controversy or not, Brill states that its working with Google (on Book Search) 'seems to have a positive effect on sales, also for backlog titels'.

Google sued by KinderStart.com

Here's a lawsuit that Google does not have to worry about. If PageRank ignores you - tough luck.

Google sometimes changes its algorithms to turn the heat up on search engine optimisation. Moreover, this is an unregulated market. Freedom of algorithms!

Belarus: case for net neutrality

Belarus can be viewed as a case for net neutrality.

Just last week president Lukashenko banned home internet access. And yesterday he was re-elected by 83% of the people, or so he says.