Verizon Wireless Formally Launches Rev A

On February 1st Verizon Wireless launched EV-DO Rev A in Boston and its suburbs, the Richmond and Hampton Roads, Va. areas, Chicago and its suburbs, and Gary, Indiana, Salt Lake City and other cities in Utah, and the entire area of Verizon Wireless’ wireless broadband network in Florida.

Recommended Competitor Actions

► Sprint should note that it announced Rev A in October, and already offers two PC cards and a wireless USB modem to support the network which is now available in over 20 cities. It should also work quickly to leverage Rev A for an upgraded PTT service on it CDMA network.

► Cingular should note that its own network, based on GSM/GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA, offers key benefits. It should stress that its own PTT service offers latency/set-up time that is very similar to that of Nextel and that it features presence information and enterprise grade calling features. It should also stress the fact that U.S. customers can roam internationally for data, on a wide variety of laptops and PDAs, smartphones, and feature phones due to the common GSM technology used widely in Europe and Asia. It should consider pre-announcing plans for subsequent generations of its network, however, which will provide higher uplink speeds.

AT&T Unity: A First Step in Converged Wireline-Wireless Services

On January 19th AT&T announced the creation of a new calling plan that provides unlimited calling with all AT&T wireline and wireless customers.

Recommended Competitor Actions

► Alltel and T-Mobile should promote the flexibility and ease for customers to change their calling circle. While the calling area is potentially 100 million phones, realistically prolonged calling is to a select group of people. All other calls can be handled with anytime minutes.

► Sprint and its joint venture cable partners need to rapidly get beyond wireless trials in a few select markets and offer an alternative and ratchet up features (voice or data) to the AT&T Unity Plan.

► Cable providers can exploit the high cost of AT&T’s new calling plan which requires qualifying customers to spend at least a $110 a month to receive the perk of unlimited calling between AT&T wireless and wireline numbers.

► Sprint joint venture cable partners, which are AT&T’s main residential service competitors, need to keep hammering away at winning long-term AT&T consumers with their own service bundles, particularly by adding voice and wireless services to their high-speed Internet and video line-up. .

► Verizon Wireless needs to work with its wireline parent to offer a similar benefit if not mirror most if not all elements of the Unity plans. Ideally, it should bring in additional features beyond unlimited calling within the wireline footprint.

Recommended End User/Customer Responses

► Customers (consumers and small business) who are served with AT&T wireline services and are Cingular users should look into Unity plans as all calls to AT&T landlines are unlimited. However, if consumers will need to upgrade their wireless plans to $60 (individual) and $70 (family) and have an unlimited wireline calling package as a plan condition. Moreover, customers will be asked to consolidate to one bill as well and have to give up the Rollover feature.

► Customers will need to understand that, if there is a termination of the wireline portion, they will no longer have the benefit of mobile-to-wireline calling, as this is automatically removed. Cingular calls will be billed at normal airtime rates.

Helio Makes Wireless Music Push with New OTA Download Service

On February 6th Helio launched Helio Music, an over-the-air music download service with an initial catalog of 150,000 songs from four major record labels: Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and EMI Music. The service is only available on the Samsung Drift handset. Songs cost $1.99 for over-the-air downloads providing a copy for the handset and one for the PC. A PC/Web-based version for $0.99 per song will be available later in the spring. Customers will be able to sideload these songs onto other Helio devices.

Recommended Competitive Responses

► Cingular will continue to tout that subscription services allow for music discovery and that Yahoo! and Napster’s content libraries number over 2 million, well over the 150,000 that Helio can muster. If Yahoo! and Napster customers want to own music, they may do so at discounted rates, lower than the $0.99 standard price. Besides, eMusic and iTunes also offer ownership for those customers who wish that as well. In the end, Cingular offers a wide music choice and flexibility.

► Sprint will note that within its Power Vision Packs, one song (Plus Pack) or four songs (Ultimate Pack) are bundled each month, whereas Helio’s “All In Memberships” aren’t as inclusive as the MVNO wants its customers to believe. Besides, Sprint’s “buy three for $5” promotions essentially give customers a $1.67 per song charge, which is less expensive than Helio’s per song rate.

► Verizon Wireless will point out that Helio has only one OTA capable music phone, whereas every handset within Verizon Wireless’ music phone lineup can access V CAST Music with OTA capability. Moreover, Verizon Wireless will note Helio’s lack of innovation as it blatantly copied Verizon Wireless’ music pricing structure.

► Now that Alltel is well into building out its EV-DO network with the 3G national roaming agreement in place, an OTA music service is the next logical step in providing advanced data services to its customers. Given that even MVNOs have already launched OTA music services and Leap Wireless has already signaled its intentions through the selection of Musicwave, Alltel will be playing catch up if it doesn’t launch in 2007.

Recommended End User/Customer Responses

► Current Helio customers who are looking for over-the-air music capability should welcome this music launch; however, they need to have the Samsung Drift as a device. If they have the older Hero and Kickflip models, they should call Helio customer service or invoke the Helio Trade-up plan where cash is exchanged for older electronics devices.