Verizon API Will "Turbo" Mobile Broadband

Verizon will publish an application programming interface that could allow mobile consumers to "turbocharge" the network bandwidth their smartphone apps use, presumably for a small additional fee.

"I think one of the things that you could do is guaranteed quality of service," said Hugh Fletcher, associate director for technology in Verizon's Product Development and Technology team. 

"One of the things that we are right now is very democratic in terms of allocating spectrum and bandwidth to users. And just because you request a high quality of service doesn't mean you're gonna get it. [The network] will try to give it to you, but if there's a lot of congestion, a lot of people using it, it won't kick people off," said Fletcher. Verizon API To Give Apps 'Turbo'

The network optimization API will likely expose attributes like jitter, latency, bandwidth, and priority to app developers, Fletcher said. 


Despite expected complaints from some network neutrality advocates, there is a reason such an API might provide clear value to end users. Some of you might be using 3G or 4G networks, using different air interfaces, to use interactive cloud applications. If you do that often enough, on many networks, you will have discovered the experience problem caused by latency. 


Where older GPRS or EDGE data networks featured round-trip latencies in the 600 millisecond to 700 msec. range, LTE networks feature round-trip latencies in the 50 msec. range. 


One of the important elements of a cloud-delivered application experience is latency performance, even though we most often think of "bandwidth" as being the key "experience" parameter. 


Some might say the key benefits will be for gaming apps, but many of us can assure you that other interactive apps, even those not intrinsically dependent on "real time" protocols, can suffer from mobile latency. Latency issues

Sprint says iPhone 4S Isn't Congesting the Network

Sprint says reports that the Apple iPhone 4S is causing congestion on Sprint's network are in error.

"As always, Sprint is carefully monitoring the performance of the 3G network," Sprint said. "We are looking into a small number of reports of slow data speeds when using the iPhone 4S."

All speed tests are subject to handset performance, time of day and physical location and obstructions. And some tests have suggested that Sprint's 3G network, which supports iPhone devices, is not the fastest.

Sprint says iPhone 4S Isn't Slowing Access

22% of U.S. Smart Phones Sold were 4G Capable

About 22 percent of smart phones purchased by U.S. consumers in the second quarter of 2011 were capable of running at 4G speeds. 


A year ago, just three percent of U.S. smart phones sold could run on a 4G network, according to the NPD Group. 

The top four smart phone 4G manufacturers, based on consumer sales in Q2 2011:
1.HTC: 62%
2.Samsung: 22%
3.Motorola: 11%
4.LG: 4%


What the study did not look at, but seems correct, is that "4G" is not yet a distinct "service." It is faster than 3G, which is good, but not yet in any way a truly different "service" than 3G. So far, 4G is a "better pipe," but just that: a better pipe, as a 10 Mbps connection is better than a 5 Mbps connection. 


For 4G is anything more than "table stakes" for mobile service providers, the end use experience will have to change. So far, that hasn't happened. 

20% of Smart phones Sold in Q2 2011 Were 4G-Capable

New Verizon Policy on Heavy Users, Congested Towers

Verizon Wireless has instituted a new network management policy that some will call “throttling,” while others might say simply represents a more-nuanced way of managing network congestion.

The new plan affects what Verizon says is about five percent of Verizon’s user base, specifically those users of 3G services that use 2 Gbytes of more of data each month, from congested cell sites. The rules do not apply to users of the new 4G network, though. The easiest solution is simply to use 4G. It’s a better experience anyway. New Verizon usage scheme

One suspects that users are capable of making rational choices about their services, and also will rapidly adopt the “default to Wi-Fi strategy.” Most people already seem capable of quickly grasping the advantages.

Some 64 percent of smart phone consumers surveyed by Devicescape use Wi-Fi hotspots at least once a day. Most smart phone owners who use Wi-Fi also use it on the road.  The study showed 90 percent of those users report accessing Wi-Fi both at home and on the road. Smart phone users use Wi-Fi often

Of those who use Wi-Fi outside their home or office, most (24 percent) connect at a cafe or coffee shop, 17.3 percent at a hotel, and 15 percent at a school campus. See Facing data caps, consumers keep turning to Wi-Fi.

Historically, mobiles haven’t been used excessively for data connections. Average mobile data consumption increased from about 90 MBytes per month during the first quarter of 2009 to 298 MBytes per month during the first quarter of 2010, according to Nielsen.

This represents a year-over-year increase of approximately 230 percent, though.  While this increase is substantial, in the first quarter of 2009 more than a third of smart phone subscribers used less than 1 MByte of data per month and usage has dropped to a quarter in the first quarter of 2010.

About 20 million current smart phone users are hardly using any data.

But there is a reason frameworks for managing bandwidth use are important. As mobile data consumption continues to grow, the usage pattern is starting to resemble fixed-line patterns, and that is a problem for all mobile service providers, as there is not now, and never will be any way for mobile providers to match the bandwidth, or cost of bandwidth, that a fixed network provider can offer.

There is a telling statistic in Cisco's Visual Networking Index, namely that as mobile broadband users have rapidly grown, their usage pattern rapidly has assumed the familiar pattern seen in the fixed-line part of the business.

Consider heavy usage patterns. The top one percent of mobile data subscribers generate over 20 percent of mobile data traffic, down from 30 percent just a year ago. That 29-point swing in just 12 months suggests that as more "typical" users adopt mobile broadband, they bring behaviors much different from those of early mobile broadband adopters, namely less-intensive consumption.

Cisco also reports that mobile data traffic over the last year also now matches the 1:20 ratio that has been true of fixed networks for several years (one percent of users generate or consume 20 percent of total transferred bytes). Visual networking index

Similarly, the top 10 percent of mobile data subscribers now generate approximately 60 percent of mobile data traffic, down from 70 percent at the beginning of the year.

All of those instances of "reversion toward the mean" are driven by the broader adoption by "typical" users of smart phone service. That noted, average smart phone usage doubled in 2010. The average amount of traffic per smart phone in 2010 was 79 Mbytes per month, up from 35 Mbytes per month in 2009.

Businesses Up Tablet, Notebook, E-Reader Spending 30%

Business spending on 3G and 4G devices such as tablets, notebooks, and e-readers was up nearly 30 percent in 2010, compared to 2009.

“A key take away from the research is that the non-handset spending increase trend seems to be universal across all sizes of business,” says Greg Potter, research analyst.  “There are some slight variations in some of the vertical segments but, they too, share a robust 2010 and have a very healthy five-year forecast.”

Enterprise spending makes up over 62 percent of business spending on non-handset data services, spending over $1.9 billion in 2010.

Enterprise (1,000 to 4,999 employees) will increase spending in 2011 by 19.5 percent in the professional services vertical. Small office and home office spending will surpass $275 billion by 2014, In-Stat projects.

The healthcare and social services vertical represents the largest share of spending, over $400 million in 2010.

ITU Says Some 3G Networks are 4G, Pre-4G is 4G, and 4G is 4G

The International Telecommunications Union recently defined  “LTE-Advanced” and “WirelessMAN-Advanced” as the only "official definitiions of "fourth generation" networks, automatically making networks operated by Sprint, Clearwire, Verizon, MetroPCS and all other operators of WiMAX and Long Term Evolution networks something other than standards-based "4G" networks.

Now the ITU has muddied the waters even more, saying that some "3G" networks are "4G," while the formal "pre-4G" networks in existence, or about to be built, also are "4G."

"As the most advanced technologies currently defined for global wireless mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as “4G”, although it is recognized that this term, while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMax, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed," the ITU says in a new statement.

Huh? Some of us have had no issue with T-Mobile USA saying its new HSPA+ network offers "speeds equivalent to 4G," because the WiMAX and HSPA+ networks do offer comparable access speeds. But it does create a definitional muddle. It's one thing for marketplace contestants to position their networks in one way or another.

It might be quite another for a "standards" body to argue that 3G is 4G, existing 4G is 4G, and other possible networks might also be 4G.

What's the point of a standard when it isn't a standard any longer? In this case, it might mean that the "non-standard" standards will grow organically to the point that the newly-minted "4G" standard simply ceases to be relevant, much as adherence to the supposedly-"legacy" TCP/IP completely killed the shift to new protocols for layers one through four of the data communications protocols.

One might say the ITU flip flop is merely embarassing, and yet another example of standards bodies attempting to define "next generation" networks. It might result in something far more substantial than that. One might suggest that the whole effort now is questionable, in terms of helping shape the development of 4G.

Once critical mass developments around the real-world 4G and advanced 3G networks, services, revenue elements and devices, evolution will happen based on those factors. That doesn't mean operators will abandon the effort to keep developing more-capable networks. But as we have seen with TCP/IP and other data "standards," the market often decides what a standard is.

So far, the markets, and end users, have decided the path for next-generation networks, in large part. That could well happen here as well. No matter what the ITU thinks, if voluntary groups such as the GSM decide to evolve LTE in some other direction, the existence of a formal standard will not deter them.

That is not to fault the well-intentioned hard work of the technologists working on the standard. The point is simply that the global telecommunications industry has yet to prove it can devise a "next-generation" network standard that real-world operators actually embrace obviously, and with great commercial success. Instead, the pattern so far has been that network operators and end users sort of grope towards better solutions as best they can.

But it is equally true that, up to this point, real-world commercial success has not been driven so much by the standards as by solutions that users believe are workable and useful.

For a discussion f the ITU standards, read this: http://www.itu.int/itunews/manager/display.asp?lang=en&year=2008&issue=10&ipage=39&ext=html and this http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/121710-itu-softens-on-the-definition.html.

For a discussion of the change, arguing that the ITU now has erred twice on the same subject, see http://www.abiresearch.com/research_blog/1520.

It's a Good Thing App Developers Aren't at the Mercy of the ITU

If you want an excellent example of why it is a very good thing that software development now is viewed as occurring in "layers," where underlying communications protocols are abstracted, consider the situation facing mobile software developers.

"If you’re realistic you’ll admit that mobile “strategy” is a 12 month window into the future at best, where very few decisions are robust," argues Nick Jones, Gartner distinguished analyst.

Devices, tools, vendors, network contracts, business requirements, customer attitudes and competitors will change rapidly, probably invalidating some aspect of a strategy every couple of months.

For that reason, it is a very good thing that among the complications an application developer does not have to worry about is uncertainty about communications protocols in layers one through four of the "stack."

If there were tight linkage between layer-seven apps and layers one to four, developers would be in a pickle, now that the International Telecommunications Union has first created WiMAX and Long Term Evolution standards no real-world network uses, and further has complicated matters by saying that existing advanced 3G and pre-standard 4G networks are, in fact, 4G networks.

See this  and this this  for more details.

It's one thing to create standards that allow global networks to communicate. It's a good thing to have an evolution plan for networks that support greater functionality. It isn't so clear how useful it is to create a well-intentioned standard that first defines all existing networks of that type out of existence, before backtracking and declaring all of them to be "standards-compliant," and then to stretch the definition to include some advanced 3G networks as well.

App developers would face much greater uncertainty were they forced to create tools and products that had to track those sorts of changes.

Mobile developers can learn from the oil industry

Will 4G be Different from 3G, and if So, How?

Exactly how 4G products and services evolve is highly uncertain at this time and very similar to when wireless operators first deployed 3G networks, Fitch Ratings argues.

For 3G networks, the industry did not offer a good view of this until smartphones, in particular the iPhone and other similarly oriented devices, drove significant consumer uptake for broadband data, as opposed to the earlier growth provided by 2G email services.

Longer term, Fitch expects the majority of operators should achieve data device penetration rates of at least 70 percent to 80 percent. If so, mobile broadband will collectively represent the killer app for 3G. But what about 4G? Is it just "3G with more speed," or something else?

Fitch expects that 4G services will likewise be defined by innovative devices, perhaps tablet oriented, with new content applications, including video that will drive significantly increased demand for data. If so, 4G might ultimately be different from 3G in providing a platform for different types of end user experiences.

There is a line of thinking that the value of 4G might initially accrue in large part from significantly-lower the cost per-bit costs to provide mobile broadband. Verizon Wireless, for example, believes the cost to deliver a megabyte of data on 4G with LTE will be half to a third of the costs of a 3G network.

But if the 4G experience is anything like what we've seen with 3G, it might take years for the answer to be found.

WiMAX and HSPA+ Speeds About Equal, in This Test

At least according to this test of the T-Mobile USA network and the Sprint 4G network in Philadelphia, Sprint's WiMAX network and T-Mobile's HSPA+ network delivered roughly similar download speeds, just shy of 3 Mbps on average.

These are real-world, average speeds, not "up to" numbers. By some estimates, 3 Mbps is easily twice as fast as the typical real-world speed with 3G, and faster than many home DSL connections.

4G Networks Tested: WiMAX vs. HSPA : The Numbers (Phone Scoop):

4G Speeds From T-Mobile

T-Mobile USA is touting its "4G speeds" in the Northeastern United States and other major cities across the country. Some are going to argue at the claim, which is properly made. T-Mobile's HSPA+ network will in face operate at speeds fourth-generation network providers are promising.

Users will not care about which air interface gives them their bandwidth, but they will care about the speed. It's true "4G speed" is not the same thing as "4G network," but only carriers care about such things. Users just want the better performance.

The latest activations are in the New York City metropolitan area, including New Jersey and Long Island, Albany, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, Connecticut (Hartford, New Haven, Milford and Stamford) and Providence, R.I.

The faster network already is live in Philadelphia, as well the Washington, D.C. suburbs. Boston and Washington, D.C. are expected to be "lit" in the coming weeks.

4G Speeds From T-Mobile Now Broadly Available in the Northeastern U.S. and Other Major Cities | Business Wire:

Sprint Might be Looking at LTE for its 3G Network

Sprint Nextel Corp. has issued a 'next generation network' request for proposal for its CDMA third-generation mobile network in the United States, and Long Term Evolution (LTE) has emerged as a potential technology choice.

The RFP does not appear to affect the Clearwire network presently using WiMAX, but the "legacy" CDMA network that underpins Sprints current 3G network that operates in the 800 MHz and 1900 MHz frequency bands.

Light Reading Mobile - 4G/LTE - Sprint RFP May Include LTE - Telecom News Analysis:

LTE Adoption Will Take Some Time: It Always Does

It will take at least five years before Long Term Evolution devices represent 25 percent of mobile broadband device sales (PC dongles, not phones), once they are introduced, and it might take as long as 16 years before LTE device sales reach their peak, based on past experience with new mobile air interfaces and device sales, according to Keith Mallinson, founder of WiseHarbor Research.

Assuming the first LTE networks activate in early 2011, that implies it will be 2016 before dongles and aircards based on LTE will represent a quarter of broadband dongle and aircard sales.

Mallinson also predicts it will be 2019 before LTE device sales are equal to CDMA-based technology devices, such as those using EV-DO, and HSPA/HSPA+.

History suggests that new mobile technologies to peak demand takes far longer than the five years, and as much as 16 years for a mobile technology to mature.

That suggests today's third-generation networks will be dominant for quite some time. AT&T Mobility, for example, recently surprised observers when it decided that, instead of moving directly to LTE, it would upgrade its existing 3G network to HSPA+. That will prove a quick bandwidth boost from about 3.5 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps for a relatively small amount of capital investment, even as it plans to start building its 4G network in 2011.

But such plans also mean that AT&T can target its 4G build to the most-dense markets, and count on the faster 3G network in less-dense areas that the company might take some time to build out, as typically is the case when new mobile networks are constructed..

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Will 4G Adoption Mirror 3G?

Adoption of fourth-generation network services likely will miror adoption of 3G services in Europe, says Decaln Longeran, Yankee Group analyst, and that has to be seen as modestly good news, but not "great" news, as adoption will not be as fast as many will hope.

"Our assessment of the early days of 3G, from spectrum auctions through to the first one or two years of commercial services, tells us a lot about where 4G is today and where it’s heading," Lonergan says. The big danger is massive overpaying for spectrum, which happened with the 3G spectrum auctions.

"Overpaying for licenses will quickly destroy the 4G business case, just as it did for 3G in several countries, including the U.K. and Germany," says Lonergand. On the other hand, if bidders show reasonable restraint, they should be in a better position to the extent that the auctions will be dominated by incumbents, unlike the situation when 3G licenses were awarded.

There will be no new 4G contestants, Lonergan predicts.

Adoption will take longer than expected, he says. "Remember, it was a full five years after commercial launch before 3G handset ownership reached 6.5 percent penetration globally, and 4G will follow a similar path," he says.

The technology won’t sell itself, he says. Faster speeds will only provide so much incentive, and it is applications that could provide the bigger push to adoption.

Handsets matter more than most people think, as well. Early 3G players failed to understand the importance of quality and choice in their handset portfolios, Lonergan says. Prepaid plans might also be essential, as 3G adoption in Europe was severely hindered in the early stages due to limited availability of prepaid plans.

Coverage also matters less than most people think. Consumers don’t obsess about coverage, except in the places where they use their devices most. That might especially prove true where 3G service is available as a backup.

On the other hand, 4G is being deployed in different circumstances, where a reasonable base of mobile broadband customers exists, and new applications that take advantage of higher bandwidth and lower latency already are getting traction, ranging from video and social networking to mobile apps related to navigation and location.

The first commercial European 3G service was launched by Telenor in December 2001, with commercial 3G services launched in 2003 by 3 in the U.K. and Italy.

But it is worth remembering that 3G also promised major performance enhancements to existing mobile services, . new services, including video telephony, multimedia content and enhanced end user experience. Right now, 4G mostly promises "faster" broadband.

The issue is whether the shift from 1 Mbps to 3 Mbps, or 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps, represents so much a change in end user experience. One might argue the Apple iPhone or iPad represents something users find tangible, not the additional bandwidth.

One might argue that mobile Web access, like mobile email before it, and smartphones, are what is driving 3G adoption. Applied to 4G, will there be unique drivers, or will 4G simply be a 3G experience, albeit with more bandwidth?

In August 2005, for example, the Yankee Group predicted, at a time when 3G penetration in Western Europe was in the range of 0.5 to two percent, that by 2009, 3G penetration would reach 52.6 percent of the population. In reality, average 3G penetration in Western Europe was 27 percent as of December 2009.

The key takeaway from this comparison is that even 3G forecasts that were regarded as too conservative five years ago have proved to be too aggressive.

A new wireless technology will not in itself excite most consumers, no matter how amazingly super-fast its proponents claim it performs. Back in May of 2006, when 3G services had been actively promoted for at least two years in several European countries, Yankee Group conducted an end-user survey that suggested 29 percent of end users had no idea whether they had a 3G phone or not. About 27 percent of respondents claimed they owned a 3G phone. Of course, it is not always the case that a 3G phone uses a 3G connection, either.

In the U.S. market, matters are even more complicated, as various 3G platforms will be available nationwide by the end of 2010, and T-Mobile USA's network might actually operate faster than 4G networks, so even speed will not be a clear differentiator.

Handsets, on the other hand, could be more important. In the first 18 months after launch, Japan's DoCoMo failed to build any real momentum behind its 3G service, and 3G users accounted for well under one percent of the company’s total mobile customer base. Then DoCoMo moved aggressively on handsets, and penetration grew.

At least in the European market, prepaid service plans have been important. Prepaid was first introduced to Europe in 1995, and it was a major factor in the rapid growth in mobile services during the past 15 years, Lonergan notes. Mobile services penetration has now reached 130 percent of the population, and prepaid accounts for the majority of these connections, fully 54 percent at the end of 2009.

Back in the early days of 3G, most of the focus (misplaced, as we now understand) was on video telephony because this was one of the few services that 3G could support and 2.5G could not. It should therefore have been a 3G marketing manager’s dream, but it turned into something of a nightmare due to unreliable performance and largely apathetic consumers.

But the single biggest difference between 3G and 4G is the world of demand into which they were born. Smartphone penetration and use of mobile broadband applications clearly is different today than was the case when 3G first was being introduced.

Mobile broadband (the laptop/dongle version) is a good example. This service didn’t exist when 3G was introduced. Neither did the iPhone.

Consumers in 2010 understand the differences between a 2 Mbps, 7 Mbps and 20 Mbps connection. In 2001, most did not.

It took five years for 3G penetration to reach 6.5 percent of global mobile users. Our projections for 4G follow a similar curve: relatively slow adoption in the first three years, with a noticeable pickup in years four to five, says Lonergan.

Some possible areas of upside include handset options, retail pricing plans and indoor coverage. "No matter how lousy the service provider's network or customer service, if they achieve the right balance and choice in their handset portfolio and price plans, just about any provider can build market share," Lonergan says.

Indoor coverage possibly could be a differentiator as well. In the early days of 3G, it was assumed 3G would be used by individuals out and about and as a complement to home land-line broadband service. 4G might be different: onsumers might use it more as a substitute for some home broadband usage, as they already use their 3G mobiles indoors.

Differential Video Experience on 3G iPad

Testers at iLounge say some video delivery applications act differently on an Apple iPad when using the 3G network than they do when the same device is using Wi-Fi access. Specifically, the iPad’s built-in YouTube application strips both standard and HD videos to a dramatically lower resolution over the cellular data connection, something that iTunes Store video previews notably do not do, instead staying at a higher quality and consuming a greater amount of data, iLounge says.

Other third-party applications, such as the ABC Player, refuse to work at all over the cellular connection, producing a notification pop-up that states, “Please connect to a Wi-Fi network to use this application. Cellular networks are not supported at this time.”

But Netflix appears to work fine.

The immediate temptation will be to blame AT&T for the variable performance, but since the applications are executing variably, it seems more likely there are video coding or even playback rights issues at play.

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Wireless Carriers Need More Spectrum, But Can They Handle the Borrowing?

Though acquisition of more mobile spectrum is a key strategic imperative for leading U.S. mobile operators,  it is not clear how much capacity and flexibility Verizon Communications and AT&T have within their credit ratings to absorb future spectrum purchases, say analysts at Fitch Ratings.

That is a significant opinion. Despite the apparent belief in some quarters that the largest U.S. telecom providers are so well positioned they can handle any shock to their financial models, Fitch Ratings does not believe that is the case.

In fact, a number of factors, including the cost of acquiring new spectrum, ability to monetize broadband services more effectively and competition from application-based wireless services all pose "longer-term threats to telecom operators' balance sheets and cash flows," Fitch Ratings say.

Fitch believes Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless, because of their scale, market power, and financial strength, will be in a better position to cope with these challenges than many lower-margin contestants, should the market environment shift. But increased reliance on wireless communications is an issue for many other contestants as well.

A key issue for cable companies is whether their wholesale arrangement with Clearwire can bundle competitive offerings that can successfully offset the significant threat from next generation broadband wireless networks as the telecom industry transitions more and more traffic longer-term to wireless, Fitch analysts say.

The Federal Communication Commission's "National Broadband Plan" aims to release 70 megaHertz of spectrum available for auction in the 2011 time frame.

Depending on the timing of the auction, the final amount of spectrum available, and the aggressiveness of the bidding, it’s not clear how much capacity and flexibility Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. have within their credit ratings to absorb future spectrum purchases.

The good news is that, by the end of 2010, leverage is expected to decline for Verizon and AT&T due to strong free cash generation and management commitment to debt reduction. Both companies’ leverage has been at the high end of Fitch’s expectations due to past acquisitions and spectrum purchases.

Other well-capitalized, smaller operators or new entrants with strong balance sheets and good
free cash flow prospects should be in a favorable position to acquire additional spectrum.

New entrants or smaller companies without good operational cash flow characteristics or
strong balance sheets would likely have a difficult time funding any commitments for
spectrum purchases or buildout requirements.

That suggests the coming spectrum auctions will reshape the competitive environment in significant ways, favoring the well-capitalized contestants and weakening the financially weaker firms.

The transition to 4G networks also would seem to provide an opportunity for operators to
implement a new pricing model for data services. But it is not clear the opportunity is all "upside."

Clearwire, for example, already offers unlimited mobile data usage for $40 per month. Clearwire does not currently cap subscribers’ data usage, where most cellular operators limit monthly data
usage at 5 gigabytes. Since AT&T and Verizon offer capped plans costing $60 a month, Clearwire is using its 4G spectrum to disrupt current levels of pricing.

The company’s management has indicated that Clearwire’s mobile WiMAX subscribers already average approximately 7 GBytes of data usage per month.

Given the current indication by operators that Internet video will be a key driver of traffic on 4G networks, operators will need to create larger “data bucket” plans with tiered pricing, as the current 5 GB 3G plans currently offered for aircards and netbooks would not be sufficiently large enough to handle subscriber demands from streaming video.

A Decade After the Bubble, Another Round of Spectrum Auctions

It has been roughly a decade since European mobile operators placed big spectrum bets on "third generation" mobile broadband, and then largely watched as killer apps failed to emerge, customer use of the new networks remained sluggish, and executives ruefully noted they had overpaid for spectrum.

Now European mobile operaters are about to embark on a new round of broadband spectrum investments for fourth-generation mobile networks. You can expect them to try to be more-prudent investors this time around. In the 2000 round the German government, for example, raised 50 billion euros, or about $67 billion, on 3G licenses. Some anticipate the government will raise five billion to 10 billion euros this time around.

We'll see. The difference between the 2000 auctions and the current 2010 round is that Internet access has emerged as the "killer app" for mobile broadband, and the difference between 3G and 4G is that 4G looks to be a potential replacement for fixed-line broadband.

"With LTE, mobile phone networks will become a real alternative to cable or DSL (broadband telephone connections)," says Herbert Merz, head of the German hightech association Bitkom.

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Wi-Fi Hotspot Market Increasingly Provides "Mobile Offload"

Some proponents once touted Wi-Fi hotspots as an alternative to mobile or out-of-home broadband service. It increasingly look as though the Wi-Fi hotspot is emerging as a way of offloading traffic from the mobile network, as well as a way of supporting mobile devices that do not have data plans.

In-Stat estimates that hotspot usage will increase in 2009 by 47 percent, bringing total worldwide connects to 1.2 billion.

“Mobile operators have become increasingly involved in the hotspot market globally as they assess the potential of hotspots to offload wireless data traffic from overburdened 3G networks," says says Frank Dickson, In-Stat analyst.

Also, mass market adoption of Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones has significantly altered hotspot usage, with these devices accounting for the majority of access sessions in some locations,” he says.

Total worldwide hotspot venues will reach 245,000 locations in 2009, while AT&T is on course to experience 500 percent usage growth, year over year, In-Stat notes.

Mobile Broadband Complementary to Fixed Broadband

Over the next three to five years, mobile broadband will be complementary to fixed broadband, rather than a substitute, says William Lehr, economist and research associate in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"I expect fixed and mobile broadband services to offer distinctly different sets of basic capabilities, and as a consequence, to remain distinct services that will not be perceived as close substitutes in most user and usage contexts for the foreseeable future," Lehr says.

There will be situations where it is reasonable to expect that mobile services will be perceived as substitutes, if imperfect substitutes, for fixed connections, and will therefore result in some cannibalization, he says.

Users who are more budget conscious (the young or others with limited incomes, for example) are more likely to choose one instead of both services, Lehr suggests.

Heavy users may prefer fixed broadband access, while light users (or those who live alone) may find the mobile alternative more appealing.

Also, users who place a high value on mobility are more likely to opt for mobile over fixed services. Conversely, those whose principal mode of usage is at a fixed location and who would have a high need for a large sized display, may strictly prefer fixed broadband services.

As mobile data rates increase, some users may find that for their usage profile, mobile is fast enough to meet their needs even for shared household use. That should especially be true now that MiFi devices can allow sharing of one mobile connection by as many as five devices.

On the other hand, even though mobile bandwidth is increasing, so is fixed bandwidth. So the relative value of mobile over fixed services is greater when the fixed service is less capable. In other words, a fast 4G wireless connection might be perceived as superior to a lower-speed digital subscriber line connection, compared to a fiber-to-home connection or DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem service.

What the situation might be in 10 years is likely unknowable, but it is reasonable enough to assume that if today's smartphones are simply tomorrow's phones, and if new devices continue to be developed, that mobile broadband always will be a distinctly complementary service. If you assume today's 276 million mobile phone users in the future will simply be smartphone users with broadband connections, you get the point.

In fact, it probably makes more sense to say that fixed services are not going to be substitutes for mobile broadband, than to argue that mobile will be a substitute for fixed access. Nearly every mobile device will require broadband, irrespective of what in-home or in-office devices require.

Whatever you think about mobile broadband, it is worth remembering that mobile broadband services were not available in the U.S. market until 2005. So we are at this point just five years into the product's lifecycle.

By the first quarter of 2008, 40 million or almost 16 percent of mobile subscribers were regularly accessing the Internet using mobile broadband services, according to Nielsen.

Analysts at Forrester Research use a lower figure of 34 million subscribers in 2008. That will have grown at a 52 percent rate in 2009 to 52 million, and mobile broadband will continue to exhibit double-digit growth through 2014, when 106 million users, or a full 39 percent of all wireless subscribers, will become regular mobile Internet users, Forrester now projects.

PC data cards represent about 34 percent of mobile broadband subscriptions, while smartphones rapidly have emerged as the key driver of new mobile broadband accounts.

Quantifying the Carrier Wi-Fi Hotspot Business Model

Customer retention--not direct customer fees--might be the biggest part of the carrier public hotspot busimess model, says Stephen Rayment, CTO, BelAir Networks.

"Churn reduction is where lots of the value is," is Rayment. Assume churn per month of two percent a month, which means a typical customer provides 50 months of revenue, he says.

Adding metro hotspot access can provide a 10 percent churn reduction, he adds. Assume the 10 percent churn benefit on a typical subscriber relationship of 50 months, meaning the typical account now remains active for 55 months. Assume a typical customer average revenue per user of $130 a month.

That suggests an extra $650 of subscriber revenue over the length of a relationship. For a service provider with 100,000 subscribers that works out to $65 million in extra revenue.

If the average customer value is $2,000 per customer, and that service provider can use public hotspot service to reduce churn 10 percent, it adds about $200 per subscriber in terms of equity value.

For a service provider with one million subscribers, that's $200 million in incremental equity revenue.

For a service provider with one million subs, making an investment of $40 million to cover all the high-traffic spots, there is a five-to-one return on investment.

There arguably could be other revenue contributors as well, though none likely approaches the value of enhanced retention. There might be an opportunity for a small amount of additional revenue. Some customers will be willing to be stand-alone hotspot subscriptions.

Service providers might make some money from other carriers by offering hotspot access to customers roaming into the local area. There could be some advertising upside or some commercial upside from providing services to public utilities or public safety organizations, he says.

Some service providers also might look at public Wi-Fi as a way to add some mobility features to their landline service.

Mobile providers also likely will find public hotspots a useful way to offload traffic from the 3G and 4G networks to the fixed network, Rayment says.

"The networks are just choking" because of heavy new smartphone traffic, says Rayment. "People really did not see this until the iPhone, but 3 in the U.K. market also saw skyrocketing demand when it started selling the iPhone," says Rayment.

Up to this point, aircards and dongles used for mobile PC connections have been driving new bandwidth demand on the 3G and WiMAX networks. But that is changing. "Dongles drove the initial demand, but will be overtaken by the smartphone," he says.

The point is that the business model for public hotspot networks frequently is indirect.

Wi-Fi's Business Model: Not What Was Expected

New technologies sometimes wind up being used in ways not originally envisioned. It might sound odd today, but there was a time when public Wi-Fi was seen by some as a replacement for fixed broadband used by residential customers, or as a competitor to wireless 3G networks.

These days, with a couple of notable exceptions, public Wi-Fi lives by indirect revenue models. It is an amenity for retail or hospitality operations that make money some other way. Coffee, food, lodging or memberships are some of the revenue models.

The notable exception is "for fee" Wi-Fi in global markets where the cost of 3G access is very high, making a for-fee Wi-Fi connection a better deal.

In recent years, the typical revenue model for public Wi-Fi has been that it is a valuable amenity for sales of fixed broadband connections and retention of customers. More recently, public Wi-Fi has become an important component of the value of some smartphones, which can use hotspots for VoIP even when it is not allowed on the 3G networks.

AT&T, for example, says that its customers made 25.4 million Wi-Fi connections in the third quarter of 2009, exceeding the 20 million connections made in all of 2008 and nearly equaling the 25.6 million connections made in the first half of 2009.

Wi-Fi usage has been increasing significantly each quarter, up from 5.2 million connections in the third quarter of 2008. Smartphones and other Wi-Fi enabled devices are the reason, AT&T says.

For the first time, the number of Wi-Fi connections made by smartphones and other mobile devices in the third quarter surpassed connections from laptops, AT&T notes.

About 60 percent of all AT&T Wi-Fi connections were made from mobile devices, up from 49 percent in the second quarter of 2009, AT&T says.

Public Wi-Fi seems destined to play a bigger role in the smartphone market going forward, as it is a great way to offload video and other bandwidth-intensive applications from the mobile network to the fixed network.

So aside from its value as a feature that supports an indirect revenue model for retailers, it is a value-enhancing way for service providers to differentiate and add value to their mobile and fixed broadband services.

In the future, it likely will assume a greater role in allowing mobile networks to better manage bandwidth. None of those initially were thought of as the "value" of public Wi-Fi.