LATAM Telecom

In San Francisco this week for Google Cloud Next '19. This is my third time attending and every year it has significantly grown in the number of attendees, sponsors/exhibitors and speakers. In 2016 – shortly after Diane Greene took the helm as Google Cloud CEO – it hosted 2,000 attendees. The following year it grew to 10,000 attendees. Last year, attendance more than doubled, with over 25,000 registrations. This year Google Cloud reports a 50% growth with over 35,000 registrations. Update 04/19/2019: You can read my comments regarding product updates to G Suite in this article by Matthew Finnegan of Computerworld. I also published a spotlight report (451 Research subscribers only): "Next '19: Google Cloud is redefining human computer interaction with voice user interfaces". Voice technology-related announcements at Google Cloud Next '19 included general availability of Google Voice for G Suite – which was announced at last year's event – and new capabilit...

A recent article published by the New York Times (Jill Colvin, "You’ve Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care?" , April 1st, 2009) announced the demise of Voice Mail and the rise of new technology and services such as Google Voice's Voice to Text and the iPhone's Visual Voice Mail. According to the article, most people don't bother to listen to their voice mail messages and that the technology is obsolete. Interesting article but Colvin's article misses the point: most of the new services she presents as examples of technology that is replacing voice mail are actually an evolution of voice mail technology. Voice to Text, for example, which is included in Google Voice, is a voice mail message delivery mechanism that allows text transcription of voice mail messages. This means that you have to have a voice mail message to begin with. It is new technology that provides a better user interface to recover voice mail messages, precisely what Colvin points out is missing fr...

Pinky: Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight? Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world! Last week Google announced that GrandCentral, acquired by Google in 2007, is now Google Voice, with new features including voicemail to text and archive and search of SMS text messages. Analysts and bloggers are divided on how this will impact voice revenues from local and international calls, but the ability to offer free Internet calls will surely be seen as a threat. When Nokia announced last month that Skype came preloaded on the N97, it incurred the displeasure of mobile operators. According to Mobiletoday.co.uk , UK operators Orange and O2 may end up refusing to stock the N97 unless Nokia eliminated the application. The incursion of Skype and Google into telecommunications adds to the mounting pressure mobile operators are facing from new players. Last year, when Apple announced it was opening up its platform to developers, they redefined the power bal...

Rich Miner, group manager for mobile platforms at Google was at the Emerging Communications Conference last week where he mentioned, after his presentation, that he expects Android-based devices to outpace sales of the popular iPhone (read note by By Richard Martin, InformationWeek here ). Miner, however, stated that the iPhone and Android target different markets. The iPhone is "a single manufacturer, it's targeted at a particular demograph", while "Android is a "complete open-source [software] stack" for mobile devices, not just an operating system". It will be interesting to see if Google will dampen any future iPhone deals; we are still waiting to hear any confirmation about the iPhone launch in Latin America.

From one of my favorite techie blogs at Salon.com , Farhad Manjoo today posted about Google working together with the city of San Francisco to provide free voice mail to to the city's homeless: "Bless Google for doing something amazing: The company is handing out phone numbers and voice-mail boxes to every homeless person in San Francisco. Folks can sign up for the numbers at shelters across the city. The numbers will be local and personal -- i.e., each person will get a unique 415-area code number that will never expire. The number will ring a voice-mail box that will play a personalized greeting; homeless people can check their messages by dialing in from any phone." Great initiative by Google and SF mayor Gavin Newsom, that others can and should emulate! This idea should be adopted by other cities, surely Verizon and others will be happy to participate in similar initiatives. In Latin America, this reminds me of an initiative by Carlos Slim's TELMEX, the fixed line...