There’s an interesting article on Generation Y and how it will change the web on the website ReadWriteWeb. It raises a number of important issues about Generation Y, but the most striking thing to me was this paragraph, on Generation Y’s attitude to work:

Work Isn’t Their Whole World: Sure, they’re going to go to work, but it had better be fun. For Gen Y, work isn’t their identity. It’s just a place. Gen Y sees no reason why a company can’t be more accommodating, offering benefits like the ability to work from anywhere, flex-time, a culture that supports team communication, and a “fun” work environment. They’re also not going to blindly follow orders just because you’re the boss. Sometimes dubbed “Generation Why?” they need to “buy in” as to why something is being done. Old school bosses may find their questioning insubordinate behavior, but they would be best to just change their management techniques and adapt. Gen Y hasn’t known much unemployment and they’re not going to put up with being treated poorly just for sake of a paycheck. (Bosses, your survival guide is here).

I’ve seen similar remarks made about Generation Y in the context of the tools this generation will use in the workplace. Instant messaging, text messaging, social networking and other technologies, and not email or phone calls, are the way this generation prefers to communicate, but the most controversial assertion for me, which is repeated in the excerpt above, is this idea that companies, and not these junior employees, are the ones that will need to change.

When the rest of us older folk (relatively speaking) arrived in the workplace, we were handed the tools we needed to do our jobs, which likely included a desktop PC with email and (depending on how much older we are) Internet access, and a deskphone, and told where the stationery cupboard was. We didn’t expect to use our personal tools in the workplace, and absolutely expected to conform to what our employers told us and not what we thought we should do. Why should this generation be so different?

The negative reason seems to be that this generation might also be called Generation Spoiled. Parents, teachers and others have bought into the ethic that there’s no wrong answer, that children need always to be nurtured and given positive feedback and not criticism, and so on. I worry that this attitude to giving Generation Y what it wants in the workplace is a continuation of the spoiling of this generation, and that they’re going to go through life with a sense of entitlement as a result. Will they in turn pass on that same attitude to the next generation (Generation Z?) ?

There are two better reasons for this attitude. The first is that, in order to attract the best and brightest among this generation, companies feel they have to offer the most flexible and congenial working environment possible. To an extent, this actually makes a lot of sense, since they will be actively competing with other employers for those employees, who will choose their first employer partly on the basis of their perceived enlightenment on these matters. In practical terms of course, the companies which are most attractive to these candidates probably already have practices which meet these criteria – think Google, Yahoo! and others.

The second reason is that this trend is part of a much bigger shift in power and in the flow of technology. In the past, including when most of Generation X joined the workforce, new technologies were often experienced in the workplace, whether fast computers, Internet access (and then broadband), mobile phones, email, and so on. However, many of the more recently available technologies have been experienced first in personal life – instant messaging, even faster Internet access, social networking, mobile messaging, video calling and so on. Because this is a much wider shift, although Generation Y may be the first to have grown up in it, all subsequent generations will bring the same experience with them, dragging their personal tools into the workplace because their personal lives are where the innovation is taking place now. We might call this a “c2b” trend, reflecting the fact that technologies are moving from consumers to business rather than the b2c model we’re more accustomed to.

Most of what I’ve said in these previous two paragraphs applies more narrowly to the technology tools Generation Y will expect to use and not as broadly to their attitude to work in general, which still strikes me as more spoiled than enlightened. I think there are some good reasons for empowering these younger employees to use the tools they will work with most effectively, but I’m not convinced that we need to mollycoddle them. In a time of small or even negative economic growth, it seems to me that these employees need jobs at least as much as employers need bodies, and they should be treated accordingly.

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I came across two different articles / blog posts today that discussed the decline but also the staying power of legacy services. The first is a blog entry by David Pogue of the New York Times about dial-up. Here’s an excerpt:

From the mailbag:

Dear Mr. Pogue: Can you explain why big sites like Adobe and Microsoft list download times for 56k modems?

I can’t image that 56k modems are used by the majority of U.S. Internet users (or even in the Western world, really). Wouldn’t it make more sense to tell us what the download time would be for a DSL or cable connection (various speeds)?

I believe my reader is correct: dial-up modems now represent well under half of U.S. Internet users.

Do Web sites list dial-up download times on the premise that dial-up users are the only ones who care how long it will take?

My guess in answer to this question, incidentally, is that probably no-one is responsible for reviewing that policy from time to time to see if it still makes sense. It’s probably apathy as much as anything else that’s keeping those download times in place.

The second is a Wall Street Journal column about landlines. Again, an excerpt:

In last week’s Real Time column about cellphones, I wrote that “a call on my landline is almost certainly a wrong number, a charity or a recording of a politician.” Which led one reader to ask a very reasonable question: Why keep the landline?

The answer, unfortunately, involves throwing my wife under the bus: She’s the one who wants to keep it. But her reasons are pretty good: She notes that our cellphones aren’t charged “half the time,” which I’d dispute specifically but not generally; we have a good phone number that’s easy to remember and to dial; and we’re listed in the directory, without which there’d be no way for people who’ve lost track of us to find us. When I said people would just Google us, she said “I’m an old fogey, what do you want?” which is a kinder version of “Shut up, dear.”

Let the record show that my wife is in no way an old fogey. But the record also shows that the tide — at least in the U.S. — is running against her. A report released last week (see the PDF here) by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention paints a picture of a rapidly vanishing landline business. In the last six months of 2007, at least 15.8% of U.S. households had at least one wireless phone but no landline, and 14.5% of adults — 26 million — lived in a household with only wireless phones. (The CDC’s first such survey, conducted in the first half of 2003, found 2.9% of adults living in wireless-only households.)Throw in the 2.2% of households that had neither wireless or landline phones and 18% of U.S. households are without the traditional phone service that was part of our common culture for generations. Landline phone penetration is now what it was in the early 1960s.

The point is that both of these articles are about technologies in decline. In the case of dial-up, of course, it’s a much newer technology that is nonetheless much further along in the decline – only a small minority still have dial-up Internet connections, whereas landline owners are still by far in the majority. But in both cases, those technologies are going to reach the point where networks and services are being preserved for a smaller and smaller number of customers. At some point, the providers of those services will have to flip the switch on those services to “off”.

They’re not the only such services, and it’s a tricky thing to grapple with. We’ve recently seen the switch-off of AT&T’s TDMA network, and in early 2009 we’ll see the shutoff of the analog TV network. Sprint has caused some problems for itself by providing an off date for its legacy business networks, giving its competition some easy ammunition. At some point, all companies will reach the point where the cost of maintaining these networks for the laggards is outweighed by the benefits of forcing a switch, but the trick is always calling that point accurately. And the downside is getting it wrong and causing a huge customer service and/or sales problem. Luckily, landlines are going to be around for quite some time, but that dial-up market is going to be heading for the chop rather sooner. When does AOL flip the switch on that?

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I recently came across Tweetscan, which allows you to search Twitter postings for keywords or phrases. Why would you want to do this? Because people “Tweet” about your product, your company, you, and not just about the fact that they’re on their way to the bathroom, or feeling really hungry, or about to go to bed, or whatever. And although you’ve probably figured out by now how to search blogs and the news sites (thank you Google), you probably hadn’t figured out (or even realised that you needed to figure out) how to search Twitter.

I did a search for the name of the company I work for, Ovum, which yielded mixed results. Some of the hits were definitely about the company and were therefore relevant, while about the same amount were about something or other to do with a human egg going through the process of fertilization. (Note to anyone thinking about naming their company after a biological term: please don’t – bad idea, and not just because of the Google searches.)

But at any rate, it’s a useful tool when it works. I’ve seen posts quoting Ovum research, people pointing out news about Ovum, even one of our editors saying that we’re desperately trying to hire more of them. The best thing about Tweetscan, though, is that you can set it up as an RSS feed. So instead of obsessively checking once a day or once a week to see if there’s anything recent (or more likely, forgetting to check for weeks on end only to find out that someone slandered you last month and it’s all over the web already), you can simply subscribe to the feed for your search, and then check it along with the rest of what’s in your RSS reader. Nifty stuff.

I’ve had it set up in my Google Reader subscriptions for a couple of weeks now and there’s been something in there at least every couple of days. Apart from anything else, it’s been a fascinating way of telling which other Ovum employees use Twitter, and which other people that work with Ovum do as well. I highly recommend it. Summize is another service which offers some similar features.

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Harold Wilson, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for parts of the 1960s and 1970s, coined the phrase, “A week is a long time in politics”. I was reminded of that phrase when I read a post just now by David Pogue, the New York Times’ tech columnist about a new book about Microsoft by Mary Jo Foley. Foley posted about the key issue on her own blog as follows:

As I mentioned in the conclusion of Microsoft 2.0, I had just submitted the final version of my book manuscript a week before Microsoft announced its $44 billion bid to buy Yahoo.

Disbelief was followed by utter despair — and not just on Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s part. All I could think on February 1 was I was going to have to go back and revise every single one of my 300-plus pages.

I did go back in and update my chapters to reflect the possibility Microsoft might end up buying Yahoo. Then I revised again to say Microsoft did buy Yahoo (given that much of the press in February made it sound like it was pretty much a done deal). Right before my drop-dead go-to-printer date, I revised one last time, saying that Microsoft might or might not buy Yahoo.

Well, as we now know, on May 3, Microsoft withdrew its takeover bid, after being unwilling to meet the higher per-share price that the Yahoo board was demanding.

So this poor woman completed her book on Microsoft, then the Yahoo! bid was announced, she made a bunch of changes to incorporate the seemingly inevitable acquisition and submitted the final version, and then Microsoft called the whole thing off. What a miserable experience, and presumably one which will greatly damage sales of her book.

But all this makes me wonder how much it’s really possible to predict the future in the world of technology. If a week is a long time in politics, it can sometimes be an eon in tech. We’re being asked now for our research publication plans for 2009. The year won’t even start for another seven months, and won’t end for 19 months, and yet we’re supposed to predict the broad outlines of what we’ll publish that far ahead. I just can’t imagine that we’ll be able to do an accurate job of forecasting what’s we’ll publish in late 2009, and yet clients will not doubt want to hold us to at least some of it regardless of whether it’s the most relevant or interesting research to be publishing that far down the road.

Of course, we publish forecasts with a five-year time horizon and generally think we have a good handle on future trends. And in terms of Internet penetration, or wireless subscribers, or MPLS ports, that’s actually fairly straightforward to do. Occasionally, we might buy into the hype around a new product or service too much or underestimate the growth in an unexpectedly hot market. But on the whole those long-term product and service trends are relatively straightforward. They tend to grow in a steady fashion after they cross the famous chasm and so are relatively easy to predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

But predicting industry news, actions of specific players and especially mergers and acquisitions is much more art than science, and would take a real crystal ball and not the analyst’s metaphorical one to foretell accurately. This is why it’s important in our job as analysts to separate one from the other. We can still do the forecasting bit, and we can certainly talk about whether it would be wise for a particular company to pursue a certain course. But we shouldn’t really be in the business of predicting decisions or performance by a particular company unless we have real inside information (in which case we probably shouldn’t anyway).

We all have a lot of work to do in providing balance between these various things that we do, but we also need to be honest with our audiences about what we can reasonably do and what we should leave to others more willing to peddle their fortune telling skills.

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I posted a while back about a dinner I had with some other analysts with Dan Hesse, the new CEO of Sprint. At the time, I said that I came away from that dinner with more confidence than I had had in a while about Sprint’s prospects.

Well, I’ve just come away from Sprint’s analyst event and it’s been a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s always good to get a deeper dive into everything a company of Sprint’s size is working on – there’s always a lot more beneath the surface that you just can’t get into in one evening’s discussion over dinner, and some of that detail is reassuring and impressive. On the other hand, there were other things – some specific initiatives but also some themes and trends which emerged over the day and a half of the event – which were more worrying.

On the positive side:

• Sprint has three clear strategic priorities: fixing the customer experience, establishing a clear brand in the market, and focusing on profitability. This clarity of purpose and focus on fundamentals is a good thing, and the key will be to execute on it without adding a raft of additional initiatives and programs over the coming months. Sprint needs to get the basics right before it gets distracted again.
• Accountability is being pushed down throughout the organization, with four business units each having their own P&L, and customer satisfaction in particular being made a component of bonus structures for everyone except salespeople. This is a big and positive change from the previous administration.
• The iDEN network’s capacity problems have been fixed, partly because so many customers have left but partly although through targeted investment and a better approach to managing capacity. As such it is now performing at ‘best-ever levels’.

These are all important steps, and the key will be consistency in sticking with them.

But on the negative side:

• In many of the conversations over the past couple of days, I got the sense that Sprint is relying heavily on its WiMAX initiative (soon to be Clearwire) to fix many of its problems. It was a bullet point on so many of its slides. But it won’t make a meaningful contribution until late 2009 at the earliest, and even then the scale of that contribution is up in the air. It worries me that it seems to be something that Sprint is relying on so much.
• To a much smaller extent, Sprint used its forthcoming Samsung Instinct device as an indicator of several of its key initiatives. I believe they’re using the one device to represent a wider range of devices, but it was worrying how often that one particular device was used, and how few other groundbreaking devices Sprint has in the pipeline. It was used to illustrate Sprint’s commitments to  openness, innovation, usability, and touch screen devices in general, and it is Sprint’s main answer to the iPhone, but I believe it falls well short of the iPhone in a number of key ways. And that’s a little worrying too, because it suggests Sprint is banking on a single device too much, and also that it isn’t able accurately to gauge its position in the market.
• Sprint also appeared to be in denial about its competitiveness against Verizon and AT&T, its two major competitors in the business market. Its proposed differentiators – even in future – were things it has claimed to be doing for the past four or five years, with the key thrusts being WiMAX (again), convergence (which was once a differentiator but no longer is) and flexibility (the flip side of being sub-scale) – something there is some merit in, but probably not a key element of its differentiation strategy. I believe Sprint faces substantial competitive disadvantages against these two companies in particular and I don’t see any way for Sprint to overcome those in the short term.
• Because of all the trouble Sprint has faced, it has less money to spend on advertising and investment in its business, and it continues to suffer all the effects of running multiple networks. These problems are insurmountable in the short term (especially without a Nextel spinoff) and simply compound the other problems.
• The new “Now Network” tagline is nowhere near as easy to comprehend as Verizon’s or AT&T’s key messages, which are immediately understandable and compelling to any ordinary user. Even the next level of detail – around speed and usability for data services – doesn’t lend itself easily to a one-line pitch to consumers. And so even though Sprint is clearer about what it means than it was in the “most powerful network” days, I’m not sure its customers will be.
• In several of these areas, perceptions still lag reality. The iDEN network – both in terms of reliability and Sprint’s commitment to it – still suffers from negative perceptions which are arguably no longer in keeping with reality. But Sprint is also still suffering from the lack of clarity about its positioning in the market, despite its formidable network assets, customer base and heritage.

For all these reasons, even though I’m positive about Sprint’s potential to turn things around, I’m not yet convinced that it will actually be able to turn things around and in many ways the deck still seems stacked against it. But I think the leadership team and basic strategy are in place to give it a great chance at success if execution finally matches the strategy – something that has been sorely lacking at Sprint for the last several years.

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I just tried to sign up for Google’s new FriendConnect service. I filled in all the details and clicked “Submit” and then up came this page:

It appears Google is using one beta service (Google Spreadsheets – specifically, the feature which allows you to use forms to create spreadsheets for databases) to register for another (FriendConnect). As a result, “something bad happened.” This probably isn’t best practice for a hotly-anticipated new service from Google, much as I understand the urge to eat one’s own dogfood, as it were. Wouldn’t a standard web form with a more robust backend have done the trick?

At any rate, I’m looking forward to trying out the service if and when I can get it working. Looks like an interesting approach to “socializing” non-social networks, but a lot will come down to how it works in practice. I’m also looking forward to trying the other similar initiatives that were somewhat suspiciously all launched within a few days of each other (MySpace Data Availability and Facebook Connect).

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Mark Cuban recently posted on the topic of online video, and the likelihood that it would generate far lower advertising revenue than the equivalent video delivered through the traditional CATV systems. His analysis is centered on and borrows heavily from analysis by Craig Moffett of Sanford Bernstein. Quoting from that report, he says:

Five years into the video-over-the-Internet revolution, we have learned two things. First; consumers won’t pay for content on the web, so it will have to be ad supported. And second; it won’t be ad supported.

This is the main thrust of the argument, again from Moffett:

In the cable TV network world, half of all revenues come from affiliate (carriage) fees paid by the Comcasts and DirecTVs of the world. The other half comes from advertising. But in the TV world, a typical half hour show supports an ad load of about 8 minutes.

On the web, early evidence suggests that consumers will tune out – click away – if they are forced to watch more than 30 seconds or so of advertising up front, and maybe another 90 seconds of advertising over the next thirty minutes. Hulu.com, for example, which has already been lionized by many as the future of TV, serves two minutes of advertising for every 22 minutes of programming (i.e. the programming duration of a typical half hour show from television). Assuming identical CPMs for web video and TV, and after accounting for lost affiliate fees, a 30 minute program on the web with two minutes of advertising yields approximately 1/8th as much revenue per viewer.

Are content producers prepared to reduce production costs…by 88%?

In fact, the actual economics of web-based video are far, far worse than this. Our 88% decline ignores the corrosive impact of à la carte on traditional video economics. In the public debate in Washington, the phrase à la carte refers to the idea that a few strong networks demand the carriage of a host of weaker ones, effectively subsidizing a much larger family of channels. But there’s a much more important aspect of web-based àla carte that is rarely mentioned–that is, the “à la carting” of the few best shows from the rest of the day’s schedule. Or even worse, of the best few moments (news stories?) from the rest of the show. On the web, watching SportsCenter not only robs ESPN of its ability to pull through carriage fees for ESPN Classic and ESPN U (and SoapNet and Toon Disney), it also, and much more importantly, robs ESPN of its ability to use SportsCenter to support the economics of the rest of the 24-hour ESPN schedule. And watching just the best 30 seconds of SportsCenter robs ESPN of its ability to support the economics of… well, you get the idea. Expecting a few ad supported shortclips on the web to substitute for the affiliate fee revenues lost by multiple networks 24 hours a day is lunacy. “

The irony is that all this is happening at the same time as telcos, and especially mobile operators, are attempting to build significant new revenue streams based on advertising. As I’ve posted on a couple of previous occasions, advertising itself is under threat. Customers don’t like it, they bypass it whenever possible, and when they’re offered opportunities to skip it entirely, such as those offered by DVRs and video on demand, they do.

The TV industry needs to realise this, and realise it quickly, and it needs to make some significant adjustments. More of the revenue will need to come from direct payments from customers – whether subscriptions or on-demand fees – and less from advertising. This may mean increasing prices of both subscription and on-demand options, but it may well also mean producing less overall content. Whereas the Internet is said to have enabled the long tail of content and media, this trend actually argues in the other direction.

When the stuff of niche interest is no longer cross-subsidized by the stuff of broader interest, it will no longer get made, because there will no longer be a way to fund it. Everything will have to stand on its own, because the costs of production for a TV show are far greater than the costs of production of an individual music track or the other items for which the long tail theory works. This may well mean less documentary and other fact-based content and more big-bang, high production value content, which is probably a bad thing. But it will also mean that networks become a lot more selective about the kinds of things that get funding, so it may also have a beneficial effect in reducing the amount of trash we’re subjected to.

Without a doubt, this is a long-term trend, and not a short one, and we’re in the very early phases. But over the next few years, the adjustments the TV industry will have to make will be at least as significant as those the music industry is already having to make, and probably much more so.

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There are reports that Sprint is considering spinning off Nextel. Interestingly, one of the options being considered:

Sprint is said to be contemplating a couple of options for Nextel. The company has held preliminary talks with Nextel founder Morgan O’Brien, who now runs a company called Cyren Call Communications in McLean, Va., that is trying to create a nationwide wireless network for public-safety communications.

is very similar to a scenario I considered in a post a while back:

It would make a lot of sense at this point to cap investment in the Nextel network, build a robust replacement Direct Connect product on the CDMA side, and invest there instead. Then, in time, either shut the Nextel network down or sell the rump to a specialist public safety provider. What Sprint needs now more than anything is focus on the one hand and a single network, single brand and single device portfolio to drive some serious synergies and efficiencies on the other. Keeping the Nextel network alive indefinitely feels like an act of desperation at this point. [emphasis added]

Nextel is the bear on Sprint’s back right now, and unless it does something to get rid of it, it’s saddled with several big disadvantages in competing against Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and even some of the smaller players:

• having to maintain a combined portfolio that is either considerably larger than competitors’ – if it wants each brand’s portfolio to be competitive – or maintain a portfolio a similar size to competitor’s in total, but therefore be uncompetitive within each brand (it appears to be pursuing the latter strategy)
• maintaining a level of investment in networks considerably above that of others because it is maintaining two separate networks
• trying to compete while spending a smaller amount on advertising than competitors while attempting to boost (no pun intended) the visibility of two or more brands
• trying to maintain two rather different customer bases and differentiated messaging and branding for both sets of customers and potential customers.

All of this is on top of the problems the company is already dealing with, although most of those problems stem from the merger in one way or another. Although disentangling Nextel would be difficult and painful it may well be the right thing to do. As long as Sprint has these problems to deal with it’s hard to see how it can ever be truly competitive again.

At the same time, there are rumors about a possible renewed deal with Clearwire. Again, getting Nextel out of the way would allow Sprint to really focus its attentions on investing in the next generation of the core Sprint network, which is a big gamble in its own right.

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Interesting news today on Verizon’s approach to the open access requirements associated with the 700MHz spectrum it won in the recent auction:

On Friday, Google urged the FCC to block Verizon Wireless’ $4.7 bil. successful bid for the C Block band of spectrum in the recently completed 700 MHz auction unless Verizon is forced to agree that open access rules apply to handsets it provides its own customers. Specifically, Google claims that Verizon Wireless has no intention of abiding by the open access rules governing the C block spectrum for devices it gives to its own customers and that the FCC should condition Verizon’s grant upon a clear commitment that Verizon will not exclude these handsets from the requirement.

This echoes in reality what I had said might happen in a previous post a few weeks ago:

…isn’t Google mistaken here? Is it assuming that the FCC’s open access rules go further than what Verizon Wireless had already agreed to do? The FCC’s rules are unfortunately vague, and it may be counting on a more favorable interpretation of them than Verizon is.

Google and Verizon have had conflicting opinions on the meaning of the FCC’s open access requirements – each taking the position that most clearly reflected its own views – Google’s being the most expansive interpretation possible, and Verizon’s being the most minimalist. However, in my previous post, I pointed out that even though the rules are vague, they certainly strongly suggest that Verizon will have to go beyond its existing open access project. For example:

Wireless service providers subject to this requirement will not be allowed to disable features or functionality in handsets where such action is not related to reasonable network management and protection, or compliance with applicable regulatory requirements. For example, providers may not “lock” handsets to prevent their transfer from one system to another. We also prohibit standards that block Wi-Fi access, MP3 playback ringtone capability, or other services that compete with wireless service providers’ own offerings. [emphasis mine]

At any rate, looks like we’re in for more fun and games, and more uncertainty for Verizon and its customers. Not what anyone would have wanted, and it could all have been avoided if the FCC had just been clearer about these requirements up front. Verizon can now reasonably argue that it bid based on its understanding of these rules and it’s too late to change that understanding now.

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Following on from the Qwest-Verizon Wireless news, and the negative impact on Sprint, there are lots of rumors this week suggesting that Deutsche Telekom is considering buying Sprint:

Deutsche Telekom AG is weighing a bid to acquire Sprint Nextel Corp. that could catapult the German telecommunications giant’s wireless arm, T-Mobile USA, to the No. 1 position in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter.

Well, yes, technically, it would put the combined entity in the number one position in terms of subscribers, but Deutsche Telekom would have to be absolutely bonkers to consider such a move. Sprint is already suffering from its inability to merge two incompatible networks (iDEN and CDMA) – DT would have to be a total glutton for punishment to add a third, also incompatible, GSM network to the mix. Of course, you could add in WiMAX and make it four…

The theory is that Sprint’s depressed share price makes this an attractive purchase, but even so it would be a huge nightmare to merge these companies together, and would require some really dramatic changes to even begin to make it work. I say this even though I’m still somewhat confident things can be turned around at Sprint in the long term. I think that there is potential for growth again in the next year or two, and the WiMAX rollout, though risky, might just pay off too.

I know Deutsche Telekom is hugely dependent on T-Mobile’s growth to offset the mess at home, but of course this move would also take that trend in the wrong direction, dragging down the company’s overall growth path without providing any obvious benefits. Any synergies would be outweighed by the amount of investment needed to reconcile the three different network operations. The timing is also odd, since T-Mobile has supposedly now completed its 3G buildout and is getting ready to launch 3G services in June. I just have to hope that this is one of those rumors cooked up by a journalist on a slow news day and that it passes just as quickly as it has come.

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