The arrival of Apple’s iBeacon* and Paypal’s BLE Beacon has stolen the headlines but there are a host of companies that have been active in this space for some time. As well as long term start-ups like WirelessWerx, ABI Research observed about a year ago a clear shift in Wi-Fi based companies towards Bluetooth on the back of Apple’s decision not to open Wi-Fi APIs as well as growing speculation that it would in fact back BLE. Companies like Estimote, Wifarer, Insiteo and Walkbase were some of the first to make the jump, but now we are seeing big names like Qualcomm, Shopkick and ShopperTrak also getting in on this, (again, as forecast by ABI Research) and they will by no means be the last. We are fast approaching a stage where if you don’t have BLE support, you better have a very good reason for it, hence a number of announcements ahead of CES and NRF (which ABI will be attending).

There are several rumors regarding the issuance date of 4G licenses being November 28, December 18, or the end of December. November 28 has already passed without issuing licenses, so it is speculated that licenses might be issued to coincide with the date of China Mobile's introduction of the 4G brand. Finally, China has issued TD-LTE licenses on December 4, 2013 after a year of speculation. Why is the allocation of 4G spectrum so mysterious? What is the concern behind the 4G licenses?

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman recently hinted at rules to restrict the spectrum ownership of big operators.

“… to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else,” said Winston Churchill, using the quote version from the National Churchill Museum.  A paraphrase seems most applicable to European mobile telecom policy and pricing,  “You can always count on the European Telecom Operators to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” 

U.S. restaurant chain Applebee's announced it will be putting 100,000 tablet devices tableside for guest use at more than 1,800 locations during 2014.  The E la Carte Presto tablets will offer ease of payment along with the opportunity for greater customer interaction through Applebee's menus and other branded content.  Entertainment services including games and videos that can be monetized during the dining experience are future considerations.

The tech industry generally doesn't have a shortage of desire for "champions" - companies that throw their marketing budget and/or technology leadership behind an industry or technology. The splash they make then serves as a rising tide lifting all boats, making everybody rich and comfortable. Sometimes champions are being summoned to places for which they would be its only hope for future relevance, whereas sometimes they pop up organically (like champignons, you could say) in places where the environment simply is fertile and favourable. In the former case the champions don't normally bother to show up, while in the latter case they show up to further speed up things that are already moving. 

Recently, the Constitutional Court of Colombia upheld the State Comptroller’s rule which requires Claro and Movistar to surrender their cellular network equipment, on top of their spectrum, when their licenses expire in March 2014. Even though they inherited the network previously owned by the former public monopoly in 1994, they did invest USD 3.6 billion to modernize it in the past 20 years. In fact, the current technologies on the network – from GSM to HSPA+ – are all deployed by them.

On this week's Monday I attended the founding reception of a new M2M trade body, International M2M Council, or IMC as it abbreviates itself. Its founding members include a strong cast of industry heavyweights, including for instance AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Digi International, Oracle, and Telit Communications. The outfit's specific mission is to bring together the M2M suppliers with the existing practitioners and prospective adopters, and promote the related success stories and best practices. This is an important goal, since there is no doubt that M2M as a technology story could provide a better strategic narrative to the C suite, system integrators, and other hitherto hard-to-reach stakeholders. Very many organisations that could benefit from deploying M2M simply don't know what it can do for them.

When Alcatel-Lucent unveiled Nuage Networks back in the spring, I was a bit puzzled why they would go after SDN first rather than NFV.  After all, NFV was something the operator community can easily grasp, and clearly had traction with the ETSI NFV operator consortium.  Of course, ALU couldn’t just turn on a dime, I supposed, as they had been working Nuage Networks in stealth mode for two years, and it had had only been a few months since the NFV white paper publication.