One thing I noticed in traveling the past couple of weeks is that you can’t necessarily judge a smartphone by its user interface. Looking over someone’s shoulder on an airplane or in a meeting, it’s not always clear exactly which smartphone they’re using, especially if they are deep in a calendar or email app, for example.

Chances are the person is swiping to a new screen or tapping on a virtual keyboard, whether it be an Apple iPhone, one of the many Droid phones or an HTC-enriched Windows mobile phone.

One wonders what will make a customer not caught in the daily sturm and drang of our industry choose one phone over another. The answer, of course, is marketing.

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Reporting live from Day Two of STL Partner’s first Telco 2.0 event here in Orlando. Read yesterday’s report here.

We’ll follow the conversation throughout the day as it bounces from topic to topic. Up first: mobile data trends and voice 2.0 opportunities.

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I’m spending the next few days in Orlando at STL Partner’s first Telco 2.0 show here in the U.S. The conference has quickly grown in influence as one of the industry’s go-to events for new thinking about telco service and business (and, frankly, survival) models.
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NextGen Marketing Group, a virtual marketing shop with very deep executive roots in the telecom industry, this week launched new suite of services to help its telco customers cut their marketing costs while keeping the marketing pedal to the metal. more

So this week Adtran invited press and analysts down to Huntsville, Ala., for a debriefing on upcoming announcements and a tour, of among other things, its manufacturing facilities that build and assemble enterprise and carrier equipment here on U.S. soil, right in-house.

The company does ship high-volume manufacturing off-shore to contract manufacturing partners, but says managing first-runs and rush jobs locally — with its engineers and designers right in the next building — can actually save money when all costs are accounted for. Further, it gives the company insights into its own products that it claims competitors lack.

U.S-based manufacturing is so rare these days, we thought we would share a look. more

Adtran this week opened up the doors to its Huntsville, Ala., headquarters to press and analysts to talk about a range of topics spanning its enterprise and carrier businesses.

On the service provider side of the house, the focus was on helping carriers drive IP and Ethernet ever deeper into the network while using Adtran’s multi-access platforms to affordably serve the mix of copper and fiber and TDM and Ethernet environments that are the reality today for most carriers.

Also on the agenda: opportunities in mobile backhaul, especially moving from bundled T1s to something more flexible, affordable and Ethernet-based; thoughts on broadband stimulus, national broadband and other funding scenarios; and the potential for blurring the unified communications lines between enterprise and carrier.

Plus: a tour of its on-campus manufacturing operations — a unique resource in an industry in which most manufacturing off-shored and outsourced. more

Connected Planet is working with STL Partners to provide coverage of the first of the U.K.-based strategy consultant’s influential Telco 2.0 events to reach the U.S., to be held Dec. 9-10 in Orlando. As a lead-up to that event, STL CEO and founder Simon Torrance and his team shared with us — and we’re sharing with you — some analysis of the most recent Telco 2.0 event, held last month in London.

Up today: Insights into Consumer Services 2.0, a session that examined the ongoing Web vs. telco battle over delivering the killer communications and social apps of tomorrow. (Also in this series: Telco Data 2.0)

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Connected Planet is working with STL Partners to provide coverage of the first of the U.K.-based strategy consultant’s influential Telco 2.0 events to reach the U.S., to be held Dec. 9-10 in Orlando. As a lead-up to that event, STL CEO and founder Simon Torrance and his team shared with us — and we’re sharing with you — some analysis of the most recent Telco 2.0 event, held last month in London.

Up today: Insights into Telco Data 2.0, a session that explored the issues surrounding telco resources of subscriber data, the opportunities they create, the barriers to success and the critical requirements.

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We’re proud to announce that TelephonyOnline was the winner for best online column in min’s 2009 Editorial & Design Awards, which recognize excellence in content and design among consumer and business-to-business media.The award is for a December 2008 column titled “What the FCC didn’t tell us about the USF audit.” In the column, TelephonyOnline contributing editor Joan Engebretson questioned statements from the FCC, which estimated that small rural carriers had been overpaid by $970 million for providing phone service to high-cost areas.

Joan did her own analysis of the data and determined that the FCC’s estimate was too high, overstating the overpayment by a factor of five or more.

We congratulate Joan for her excellent work.

Thought getting an Android phone for $199 was a good, on-par deal with Apple’s iPhone?

How about getting one for just $30 — or less?

While Apple has held the iPhone price steady at $199/$299 price points (while reportedly mulling an entry-level iPhone priced at $99), Wal-Mart.com (along with partner LetsTalk) is currently selling the HTC Droid Eris for just $30.  more