The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Scheinman has also been happy to spill some beans about EOS to the Wall Street Journal. It reported him this week describing the initiative as "a major thrust for Cisco."
Scheinman told the WSJ that he had persuaded Cisco CEO John Chambers to form the Media Solution Group because he, Scheinman, was looking for new challenges and had become intrigued by social networking after helping orchestrate Cisco's acquisition Scientific Atlanta in 2005 and Linksys in 2003. The Group now has a staff of 50 and its own office about 30kms away from Cisco's HQ.
The WSJ also reported that Cisco had convinced two online communities , run by the National Hockey League and auto-racing organisation Nascar, to try scaled-down versions of EOS, but did not give details. However scepticism among analysts remains high.
ComputerWorld also quoted one of the analysts who attended the analyst event commenting on the fact that the public announcement of EOS had been made at the end of a long day of presentations and without the benefit of a news release and was therefore perhaps of an experimental nature. Other analysts have also been reported pointing out that the world of content providers is very alien to Cisco, and that this new business has a very long way to go before making any significant contribution to Cisco's revenues.
The way Cisco has publicised EOS is indeed curious, but it would be foolish to underestimate its ambitions in the this direction. It has on numerous occasions made clear that it sees visual networking (the integration of video and social networking and collaboration) as the way of the future.
And as for entering an entirely new market and becoming a major player: Cisco has done that before, making the difficult shift from being purely a data networking company to a lead player in voice telephony systems. Wherever you look companies that have been largely manufacturers of hardware and associated software have strived to move into the services market with its higher margins and recurring revenues. I suspect we will hear much more of EOS, which will reportedly be formally launched later this year.
UPDATE
The day after I posted this piece, Chambers delivered the keynote address at the ConsumerElectronics Association’sannualLeaders In Technology Dinner at CES 2008 in Las Vegas. He was reported telling the invitation-only audience that online social networking andstreaming video will form the backbone of the next-generation Internet, andthat government, business and educators must work together to ensure that theUnited States participates in the economic boom it will bring.
Accordingto the report "Chambers spoke with evangelical zeal about the nextevolutionary phase in broadband development, in which content will 'find' usersglobally, distant family members will gather together via holograph and the[consumer electronics] industry will move from a device-centric to anetwork-centric model. The advances, he said, represent a market transitionthat will supercharge productivity and 'change the economic fabric ofnations'." CE makers of the world: you have been warned.
David Bass
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