Special Report

On the Hot Seat with Bluepulse's Christopher Nguyen

Mike Dolan — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:49:29 -0400

It's not often that a senior executive at Google steps down from his post to head a new startup but that's exactly what Christopher Nguyen, former engineering director of Google, did when he joined social messaging firm Bluepulse as its CTO and vice president of engineering. FierceWireless editor-in-chief Sue Marek recently talked with Nguyen about this 2008 Fierce 15 award winning venture and why it's different from all the other mobile messaging companies.

FierceWireless: Why did you leave Google to join Bluepulse? What was the appeal?

Nguyen: From my personal perspective if you look at my profile, my background has been about building things. I started my career by building a university [Nguyen was a professor at Hong Kong University of Science & Technology] and I've built and sold three companies so far. That has a certain rush of adrenaline every time you do it and I look forward to doing it over and over again. The only thing I haven't done is build a company that is worth more than $1 billion from scratch. I see Bluepulse as having that potential.

If you look at the mobile industry and its convergence with the Web, I think the potential is enormous.

FierceWireless: What specifically about this company was so appealing?

Nguyen: Mobile as an industry is about to explode. There is a shift of users from the Web to the mobile device. Mobile is a logical place, the device is always with you. The only thing limiting you is the capabilities. I grew up in the Bay area but after I finished my Ph.D., I went to Asia and lived there for 10 years. The people there live and breathe mobile technology. It weaves into people's lives. For five years, we didn't have a landline phone. We always had mobiles. Everyone in the company communicated with each other using SMS. I think over the next six to 12 months it will take off. The only question is whether it will be Bluepulse or another player.

FierceWireless: What is the value proposition for Bluepulse? There are other similar companies, what makes Bluepulse special?

Nguyen: The passion of CEO Ben Keighran matches mine. When they were pursuing me for this job, I asked them what is your end-game? If you are planning to sell this company for $50 to $60 million, I'm not interested. If you want to build a global platform, something worth $1 billion, sign me up.

Also Bluepulse is very focused in one area. Mobile is a very loose way to group this. There are a lot of different players in mobile, especially in the transition from Web to mobile. But no one is focused on mobile messaging as a hill to be conquered. There are instant messaging technologies, voicemail technologies, SMS and VOIP calls. Each player has its own area it's trying to build out. We are the only ones that I see focused on mobile messaging as the killer app. If you ask 100 people what is one activity that you would want to do--if I gave you an application that would allow you to update your status and let friends know what you are doing, about 10 people may want to do that. But if you ask 100 people if they want to communicate and send messages to families and friends, I think the answer will be 98 saying yes. We are very focused on an unexciting but mass market vertical application with Bluepulse.

FierceWireless: So you are focusing on unified communications? Is that the right term for this?

Nguyen: I have a philosophy that when you change something, you only change one variable at a time. You don't force the user to change too many variables at one time. In the desktop platform, everybody emails. As you change the technology platform to mobile they will want to do some type of messaging. Bluepulse is focused on that. Other people are doing excellent things on the mobile platform that are different from what we are doing.

FierceWireless: You say you deliver more than 150 million messages per month to users in more than 190 countries around the globe. How did you get that reach so quickly?

Nguyen: Bluepulse started as a client application but the key differentiating factor was that it worked on all phones in the world. It delivered a lot of widgets, which could do anything from IM chat to horoscope. Ben [Keighran, CEO of Bluepulse] noticed that what attracted the traffic and what retained users was the communication application more than other applications. In June of last year, the team decided to focus on delivering that. They changed from a client-based application to a Web-based application so it is more accessible to people.

FierceWireless: How do you make money?

Nguyen: Today, we don't. We are strategically focused on getting reach. I have a lot of theories on building companies. You always have to make difficult choices about where to invest your limited resources. No matter how large you are, your resources are limited. Bluepulse is facing the decision today about whether you focus on growing the user base or do you try to monetize this? You have to choose one. The observation I have made is that if you grow the user base, it is much more defensible in a competitive position. If you launch a revenue model, within seven days everyone can copy it. So as long as we believe there are ways to make money with a mobile platform, the right thing to do at the moment is grow the user base.

This isn't a theory. I've done this before.

FierceWireless: Will there be a role for the wireless carrier in your business?

Nguyen: This sounds like a politically correct answer but I believe it. There is a huge value in terms of the data connectivity that carriers can provide. AT&T is realizing this with the iPhone. I think the carriers have a huge role to play in that. But as the industry matures, the platform becomes open and you have more innovation. It will draw more data usage for the infrastructure and infrastructure players should be very happy.

On the Hot Seat with SouthernLinc Wireless CEO Bob Dawson

Mon, 12 May 2008 11:38:44 -0400

In this era of consolidation, the number of successful small regional operators is dwindling. SouthernLinc Wireless has always had a unique proposition. The regional operator, which is a subsidiary of Southern Company, uses iDEN technology to provide wireless service to its customers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. Sue Marek, editor-in-chief of FierceWireless, recently talked with Bob Dawson, CEO of SouthernLinc Wireless about the future of iDEN and the value of push-to-talk.

FierceWireless: With Sprint migrating away from iDEN and onto the QChat platform and Motorola planning to separate its handset unit from the infrastructure division, are you concerned about the future of iDEN?

Dawson: I think there is a general concern about how many people are going to be buying [iDEN]. All indications I have is that iDEN is in good shape. It could be better if that other carrier wasn't going to another product. But I believe iDEN has life in it. It's the best push-to-talk product out there.

Everything I have heard from Motorola is that they are still working on iDEN. We are currently on it. We have deployed the highly available DAP [dispatch application processor] and real-time mirrored backup. It's just one box--a smaller box but more powerful.

FierceWireless: Do you think push to talk is still a valuable application?

Dawson: It's still very valuable. Clearly people in various companies are making economic decisions and will get a better deal. Real workers still want PTT but they are not always in a decision-making process. Our biggest problem is the economy is in a downturn. There is a perception that companies are cutting back on work force. The economy and more competition are our biggest problems, not whether or not the technology is needed.

FierceWireless: Where is the competition coming from?

Dawson: There's more competition from larger carriers building in areas where we are. But we are competing with cellular, not push to talk. People that tried alternative push-to-talk offerings have abandoned them.

FierceWireless: Are you able to get enough compelling iDEN handsets?

Dawson: Yes, we are getting them. We have seen the Motorola roadmap for handsets up until 2009 and there are some good looking phones with smaller features. I'm not worried about handset roadmap. In late 2006 and 2007 that was problem but it isn't any more.

FierceWireless: Sprint Nextel says that one of the benefits of migrating from iDEN to QChat is the ability to do push-to-x. What do you think of push-to-x?

Dawson: Push-to-x, we have been talking about that for iDEN for awhile. In fact, we built our whole ad campaign around push-to-succeed. We've been looking at applications talked about for push-to-x. Sometimes it's confusing. What is push-to-x? Yeah, it's neat. But do people want it? How much will it cost?

Most of our customers are looking to talk. They want to get someone fast. If you can push to do some other thing, there is a market for it. But there's still the question of how much will it cost?

I don't see any one thing that can replace iDEN for two-way radio. This is a highly reliable network. And it seems to do the best in really bad weather. I don't think we'll find a replacement for it. I told our board that we will be doing this to 2017. Our coverage isn't prefect but no carrier can do what we do.

FierceWireless: What is your biggest challenge today?

Dawson: The economy. People are quitting services. Customers that have several radios will turn off a few because of layoffs. And with the penetration rates that we have in the wireless industry, it's a matter of 'I'll take your customers while you take mine.' And the rate plans are designed to do that.

Churn is still low, which is good. It's just gross sales that are missing now. We are putting things in place to lift that with incentives and rate plans.

Some days it's hard. I'd like to have advertising budget and a national footprint. That's why we push so hard on PTT roaming and data roaming. You can look at regional as negative or positive. When customers want to talk, they get local people that know the issues. People that will take care of them because they live and work here.

Carrier Metrics - Churn, ARPU, Net Subscribers for 2007

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:07:35 -0500

Here are some key metrics from the top five carriers in the U.S.: Alltel, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless. Check out the tables below to see how these carriers performed in terms of churn, ARPU (Sprint's is postpaid only) and net subscriber additions. Private equity firms acquired Alltel last year which is why none of its metrics were released for the fourth quarter.

Conference Coverage: Consumer Electronics Show

Mike Dolan — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:24:14 -0500

Consumer Electronics Show

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a trade show held each January in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association. It is a trade-only show and is not open to the general public. At the show, many previews of products are introduced, or new products are announced.

The show is held at the Las Vegas Convention Center with additional venues used for specific specialties. The CES is now considered one of the major technology-related trade shows.

The 2008 exhibition is scheduled to occur from January 7, 2008 through January 10, 2008 in Las Vegas.

Click here for the official CES Website

Special Feature

CES Phone Round-up

Motorola, Nokia, SonyEricsson, Samsung and Neonode are among the handset vendors that have already launched phones at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. Click here to see our slideshow.

Conference Coverage

Dan Hesse's email to Embarq employees

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 12:22:20 -0500

Dear Embarq colleagues,

It is with very mixed emotions that I have decided to accept the position of Sprint Nextel CEO. This was a very difficult decision for me to make. Both situations are great opportunities.

Sprint and Embarq enjoy a special relationship. We were Sprint employees just last year. Sprint is our largest customer and our largest supplier. Many of you have Sprint shares you want to see go up. We have many friends there. We are doing very well now at Embarq, but I feel our friends at Sprint can use my help.

I look back on my two and a half years as your leader at Sprint LTD and at Embarq with more fondness than you can imagine. We have come a long way, baby! We have had great success and a lot of fun since launching our new company in May of 2006. Not only have we accomplished much financially as we have consistently exceeded our performance targets, our culture does not resemble that of LTD. We are now innovative, feisty, nimble, externally-focused an! d confi dent in our future. WeÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve driven out bureaucracy, reduced the number of internal meetings and the size of the "decks," we wear jeans on Fridays and green is always in style, we know our "elevator speeches," we improve our communities, we care for the environment, our people come first, and we embrace the "non-negotiables."

Tom Gerke will be your new CEO. Tom is an outstanding leader. I have been impressed by his grasp of issues, his interpersonal skills, his ability to consistently produce great results, and his drive and initiative (he is the embodiment of the Nike motto Ã¢â‚¬Å“just do it!Ã¢â‚¬Â). But most of all, I have been impressed with his integrity.

With the support of a truly outstanding Embarq senior leadership team and board of directors, Tom will lead you very well. He is his own person, and Tom will put his stamp on this company. Tom and I will be great partners, important for both of our companies given the tremendous interdependencies between Embarq and Sprint.

I have made many life-long friends here. My memories of Embarq will always be very happy ones (given a wardrobe now dominated by green, it will be hard to forget you)! It has been an amazing, fulfilling two and a half years. They couldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t have been better. But, Embarq is in great shape, with a clear strategy, and it will be in great hands. I feel called to help a new team achieve the happiness and the fulfillment our people enjoy at Embarq. These fine people are struggling, and I think I can help to make Sprint a great, iconic brand once again.

I have always been, and I remain, very optimistic about EmbarqÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s future. Please enjoy my best wishes during the holiday season.

Your friend and supporter always,

Dan Hesse