The Gulf should learn from India's cheap and cheerful hospital operators, says Mr Bali.
Jim English, who works with a group of 17 vending-machine operators, says that their interchange fees have jumped from roughly six or seven cents a transaction to the federally regulated 21 cents.
"New World is really the poorest of the four fixed-line operators, " says Chang.
But Fithian says operators aren't going to install digital systems unless it greatly improves the viewing experience for all types of movies.
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Sooner or later, he says, operators will have to introduce more stringent usage caps, demand a premium for better service or charge by usage.
Feldman says East Asian operators have also expressed interest in the technology.
Mr Maloney says 20 or 30 operators in developing countries have expressed interest.
Ben Wood, senior analyst at the technology consultancy Gartner Group, says the mobile phone operators have a real opportunity to make their connection with the customer count.
One lesson from the Amazon situation, he says, is that cloud operators need to be more transparent on how the services work.
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The company says three large US mobile operators are already customers for its Rocket Optimizer tech, meant to speed up all manner of data even as mobile connections have gone from dial-up to broadband speeds.
"We're real-estate operators and manage everything we own, " says Mary Ricks, head of Kennedy Wilson's European operations.
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Even Mr Kertzmann says he can see why cable operators might still want to plump for Microsoft.
Not all real estate plays will be winners though, and Harvey says be wary of regional mall operators.
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Even if two operators are using the same script, she says, some callers may respond differently (or even abusively) depending on the operator's gender or accent.
Video chat will come later, he says, and require tight collaboration between operators, application providers and device manufacturers.
"They're snobbish, " he says of the U.S. operators' disdain for such tactics.
With the exception of Three in the UK, a Skype stalwart, European operators have been more resistant to joining up, says Stevens.
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Andrew Riseley from the Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authorities (CICRA) says a "lighter touch" will help operators.
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The breakthrough is that operators are now talking about services, not technology, says Ben Wood, an analyst at Gartner, a consultancy.
Shah says most of the major cable and broadcast operators will be switching their underlying technology to Internet Protocol in the next three to five years.
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Campbell says the robots are versatile, and the operators are "top guns" who, in the case of the BP oil disaster response, each has at least 12 years of piloting experience.
The European Commission says those prices are high, and it hopes operators will lower them voluntarily.
And the Dish Network deal is only one of many Beck says he plans to make with cable and satellite operators.
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Glen Ackroyd, director of the company, says that on one property forum for mortgage rescue operators, Property Tycoon, there are 3, 600 investors.
"The Philippines has more operators and potential operators than most countries in Southeast Asia put together, " says Jason Billings of SBC Warburg in Hong Kong.
Gemstar says it has 135 customers, including 100 cable operators.
At its height, says Andrew Heaney of Spectrum, a consultancy, telecoms operators built seven years'-worth of capacity in a single year.
Another hitch, says Nicky Walton-Flynn of Informa, is that operators have lots of databases with information about their clients' habits that would be of great interest to advertisers.
Still, Light Reading reports that "a source whose familiar with those discussions" says Google is pushing the service hard to all cable TV operators.
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