Posted by neror on Natuba

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We know Helio was burning cash like crazy, but that doesn’t entirely explain why SK Telecom was so absurdly desperate to dump their $500m investment. At a $39m acquisition price, SK didn’t just lose its shirt — it lost that, the shoes, and then the pants. You know, the pants with a half-billion dollars in them.

The MVNO model seems to be a great idea. Mobile phone users should not care who owns the towers and runs the network. They should care about the phones, the software and the customer service. It makes sense. Let the network details be a B2B transaction. I really don’t care who my ISP is as long as my Internet service can keep up with my daily Hot Chicks with Douchebags addiction.

I’m not a marketer, and I don’t know what it will take for the MVNO’s to convince consumers that retail mobile phone service from someone other than the telco is better. I don’t even know that consumers understand that Virgin Mobile is really just a marketing and customer service organization. When looking for mobile phone service, I suspect that most people look for the biggest (aka most reliable) provider. After all, we all hate dropped calls. If any provider can make the MVNO model work, it’s the original one, Virgin Mobile. Few are better at branding and providing an experience that people want than Richard Branson and Company.

I wish Apple would get into the MVNO game. It has already taken the carrier out of the software and phone business. Now, all we need is for Apple to start selling the phone service. A world where I could deal with Apple’s user experience and customer service instead of AT&T’s is a world I would gladly pay a little extra to live in. Who knows, AT&T might get better. It had the sense to get the heck out of San Antonio.

(via Engadget)

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While I’m sure that there are numerous reasons for the company’s departure, its primary excuse is air travel. I know, from personal experience, that non-stop flights from San Antonio to any major city outside of Houston and Dallas are as rare as a south Texas winter snowstorm. Trying to fly out of San Antonio on a regular basis is an exercise in patience and frustration (and lots of connecting flights). As airlines cut schedules and ground aircraft, this problem will only get worse. Still, I doubt that air travel is the primary reason for AT&T’s exodus. I share Stacey Higginbotham’s skepticism:

Perhaps the lack of good flights is a scapegoat to help Randall Stephenson avoid insulting San Antonio’s technology credentials. Although after a decade and a half in the city, the fact that few technology related startups grew up around one of the top 25 companies in the U.S., is a damning testament to the city and the company itself.

That a sea of tech startups have failed to materialize in the home of AT&T and Rackspace exposes a reality of life in San Antonio: it’s boring. For a city of its size, San Antonio has a remarkably small town feel, and most people are comfortable and content with their lives and surroundings. While admirable, this contentment is a vise that relentlessly squeezes the entrepreneurial and creative spirit from the city. There is nothing wrong with San Antonio being boring. Many people would love to live in a place where they are comfortable and content, but a boring city will not encourage creative and daring entrepreneurism, and a boring city will not attract young, creative talent. I suspect that San Antonians are content with that as well.

Even so, AT&T is not moving to Dallas because it is less boring than San Antonio, or because it is a more entrepreneurial city, or even to make air travel a little easier for its executives. Dallas is bursting with telecom companies and employees, and it makes much more sense for the nation’s largest telecom company to be headquartered there. I doubt that there is little more to it than that.

(via GigaOM)

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Posted by neror on Natuba

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(Hat tip to the very awesome Swamplot)

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Kiplinger went so far as to dub Houston the #1 city in the U.S.:

It’s the city of big plans and no rules, beat-the-heat tunnels and loop-the-loop highways, world-class museums and wiry cowboys, humidity that demands an ice-cold martini and the biggest damn liquor store on the planet. How could you not love Houston?

Now, Newsweek is getting into the game:

Houston has become a sort of Silicon Valley for the global energy industry. Urban cowboy? Think suburban geek.

…

In May, the unemployment rate in the nation’s sixth largest metropolitan area was a measly 3.8 percent. In the past year, Houston-based companies, which include 26 Fortune 500 firms, added 71,000 jobs to their payrolls. The local United Way closed out its fiscal year with a record $76.1 million in donations. At the Galleria, a high-end shopping oasis, Bridgette Bottone, manager of the De Beers store, notes, “We’re still selling the big guys”: three-carat-plus diamonds that retail for more than $50,000.

The jobs are here, but getting people here to fill them has become a real problem. According to this article in last week’s Houston Chronicle, Houston employers are having a tough time dealing with the poor housing markets in other cities:

Since about January, good candidates from the Midwest and beyond have been saying: “I’d love to come to Houston, but there is no way I can sell my house,” said Hackett.

The opposite is also true:

Some companies are facing the opposite problem: They can’t get homeowners to leave Houston. Jamie Belinne, assistant dean of career services at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, said one high-tech recruiter recently complained that he’s having trouble talking the newly minted graduates into moving to California.

With all of this growth, one would expect the traffic congestion in the city to be unbearable, but that is not the case. Houston’s freeway and public transportation system is modern and continuously updated. The latest additions to the Katy Freeway are quite impressive. Planning expert Randal O’Toole recently wrote about Houston after visiting for the PAD conference:

Fourth, although Houston has plenty of congestion, it has done more to relieve that congestion than almost any other urban area in America. Between 1982 and 2005, Houston increased its freeway lane miles by almost 80 percent and its arterial lane miles by 66 percent. The average U.S. urban area, and in particular regions such as Los Angeles and Portland, only grew their highway networks by about half that much.

I’m happy to see Houston receiving the attention it deserves as a major global city. I hope to hear and write more about how great it is here over the second half of this year.

(Hat tip to Richard for getting to this first.)

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Posted by neror on Natuba

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Posted by neror on Natuba

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