From April 4th through 6th, members of the policy control community came together in Amsterdam for Informa’s Policy Control Conference.  The speaking session focused on specific aspects of policy control technology, like enabling new services or tips on deploying policy control architectures, and were attended by network operators, industry analysis, and solution providers.

March Madness is upon us and the advances in technology have made it easier than ever to stay up to date on the NCAA Tournament action.   I am old enough to remember when the tournament was shown on only one channel at a time and even old enough to remember when they didn’t televise the whole thing.  But that is story for a different time and place.

I was excited this year when I learned that CBS was going to make it really easy to watch any game, anywhere, using almost any device.  This aligned perfectly with a paper I am presenting at the upcoming Cable Show in Chicago this June and now I could claim I was doing “research” while watching the games via broadband.   In my opinion, the first week of the tournament is the most fun, when multiple games air on the same time and while one is constantly trying to figure out which upset to tune into.

We’ve all heard anecdotal and media reports of mobile subscribers getting a nasty surprise when they open their monthly bill.  CNN ran such a story in the wake of last year’s devastating natural disasters in Haiti:

Mobile World Congress (MWC) is one of the world’s largest mobile technology showcases, and this year’s 2011 event from February 13-17, 2011 was no different.  MWC was a confluence of headline grabbing keynotes, announcements, new product launches, and remarkable demonstrations.

MWC brought together thousands of different players in the mobile world, from small start-ups and individuals selling accessories like mobile phone skins in 3×3 metre booths, to larger companies with massive, multi-million dollar pavilions, with room for hundreds of people to view live presentations in amphitheatres, talk with experts, and experience some of the latest products and applications. 

Of particular note were the Android and Blackberry Partner community areas where hundreds of companies leveraging these device platforms showed their wares.  In addition, Apple won one of the most prestigious awards that the GSMA Show Sponsor offers for “Phone of the Year” with the iPhone 4 but nobody was there from the company to even accept the award.  Lastly, the announcement by Nokia to abandon Meego and Symbian just prior to the start of the show resulted in unfortunate lack of interest at the dozen or so booths focused on applications using these mobile operating systems.

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