In an article in the FT, the former state telcos in France, Spain and Germany are all making comments along the following lines: “Google should share some of its online advertising revenue with the telecoms groups, so as to compensate the network operators for carrying the technology company’s bandwidth-hungry content” (César Alierta, chairman of Telefónica).

Sorry, but I don’t buy it. I pay CableCom (Swiss cable company) the equivalent of about 90 USD / month for their fastest domestic broadband connection (25/2.5 MBit/s), and I pay SwissCom (former Swiss state telco) every month for a data allowance. If this isn’t enough to pay for the required infrastructure, then they should charge me more or provide less bandwidth for the same money. I can either pay up or switch to another provider.

And there’s the rub – the telcos might want to be more than “dumb pipes” but that’s essentially what they are, and it’s not in the interests of consumers for them to be more than that. If my web services are tied to my internet connection, then I can’t switch easily, nor can I choose to get my mobile and fixed line internet from different providers. Think about that .com email address you had when you first got on the internet. You give yourself far more flexibility if you go with Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail etc.

So the telcos have become dumb pipes because that’s what a fairly efficient market supported by government regulation has delivered over the last ten years. And they take money from their consumers, so there’s no automatic moral case for them to take money from providers – nor do they have the leverage to force this to happen (unless they decide to act as a cartel!)

Good for you and me, and a shame they can’t move on from complaining about this and work on being the best plumbers they possible can be.

They left it almost to the last minute, but yesterday, Roadsync 5.0 for Symbian S60 was released, an now includes support for Google apps: push IMAP email, in addition to calendar and contacts sync through ActiveSync that’s been available since the summer.

I’m pleased to say that it does exactly what it says on the tin:

• It works with gmail.com and Google apps
• It syncs email to your device
• It lets you send email
• You don’t need to pay any service fees, or give your Google Apps password to any third party site
• it syncs the read unread status of your emails in both directions

It’s the last two points that might set it above the Blackberry. A Curve 8520 arrived in the post for me yesterday – the first time I’ve ever had a BlackBerry – and while I’m very impressed, the fact that it will only sync the read status of email in one direction (Blackberry -> Google Apps) seems completely unnecessary, as well as being quite annoying.  Given how long BlackBerry have been in the email game, I’m really surprised by this.

What about the cost? RoadSync 5.0 costs 50 USD – which is about the same as five months of the ‘BlackBerry option’ at SwissCom – so about 1/2 the price if you consider that RoadSync has been upgraded about once a year since 2007 (of course it’s still more expensive than on an iPhone or Android device – free s/w from Google and no service charges – but I need something to tide me over until we know what the Nexus One really is).

The BlackBerry still wins on one count though – you can have as many mailboxes as you like, whereas RoadSync only supports a connection to a single server. So you can’t sync both Google Apps for work and your personal Gmail. My only other complaint is that status flags / stars aren’t synchronised (Gmail does support this), although if you set a status flag on the device, it sets the email as unread in Google Apps – which is not really the right way to do it…

Anyway, on the whole, very posititive. Merry Christmas!

Since inception, it has taken around 12 months and a lot of discussions to get the programme off the ground.  As with any business proposition I had to articulate my rationale and justification for the project – my attempt was a white paper called “A Perfect (Disruptive) Storm”.  For the purposes of history and for those might be interested in attempting this in their own region a copy of the final “draft” of the paper is available below.

Note since this white paper there have been a number of structural changes to the final programme.

Andy Rubin is no mug – he has worked at Apple and was one of the founders of Danger Inc which designed the Sidekick – a device concerned with function over form.

So what’s different about the G1?  The chin.  The G1, it’s all about “the chin”.

Whilst it may benefit from the microphone being closer to the mouth (a la Moto Z8) – the chin comes into its own when turned sideways.  The combination of the tilt and roller ball (which I guess will sit close to your thumb) means we are looking at a device designed for web browsing.

A key criticism of the iPhone is the constant marks on the screen – could this be less of a problem for the Google phone.  The primary function of this device (after phone calls) is as a web browser – playing to Google’s key strengths.  All of the app development on the iPhone has not gone to waste – what else has Google got up its sleeve before its launch.  Do not underestimate Google; at your peril!!

A couple of other interesting observations is the sideways orientation and the roller ball should make this a great mobile gaming platform.  Also with the screen closed the google phone should work as well for “lefties” as righties”.

Finally, the “Google” logo on the rear of the device will clearly add brand recognition that HTC does not have.  More interestingly, this raises the question of whether Google is paying HTC and/or T Mobile for the inclusion of its logo?  Is Google subsidising this phone?