Android Market Gets AT&T Carrier Billing

Android users who are customers of AT&T now can use AT&T "Direct Carrier Billing" for purchases from the Android Market.

The move shows the role a mobile service provider can play in mobile payments for digital goods, even though carrier billing has been available for decades.

Some firms using carrier billing from a number of carriers say the payment method can be expensive without volume, but Android Marketplace should not have a "volume of transactions" problem.

Android Developers Blog: More Payment Options in Android Market

AT&T Acquires 700-MHz spectrum from Qualcomm

AT&T is buying spectrum licenses in the 700 MHz frequency band from Qualcomm for $1.925 billion. The spectrum will be used as part of AT&T's Long Term Evolution 4G mobile broadband network.

Qualcomm had been using the spectrum to support its FLO TV business, but Qualcomm is shutting the service in March 2011.

The spectrum covers more than 300 million people total nationwide and includes 12 MHz of 700 MHz D and E block spectrum covers more than 70 million people in five of the top 15 U.S. metropolitan areas, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The network also includes 6 MHz of 700 MHz "D block" spectrum covers more than 230 million people across the rest of the United States.

Frequencies in the 700 MHz and 800 MHz bands are highly favored for mobile services because the signals feature both more range and greater ability to penetrate buildings. As indoor coverage is a continual issue for mobile services, the new frequencies will help AT&T deal with indoor coverage for its LTE network.

read more here

Verizon Wireless to Sell iPhone: Only Issue is How Many

Among the longest-running "dramas" in the mobile business has been the question of when the Apple iPhone would be for sale by a second U.S. mobile provider. The betting generally has been that it would be Verizon Wireless. Here's a discussion of the potential differences, based in part on the different air interfaces and networks AT&T and Verizon Wireless operate.

AT&T lays out SIP peering architecture

AT&T now is talking about its architecture and business plans for its SIP peering exchanges. While a company spokesperson wouldn’t discuss how far along the company was in discussions with other tier-one carriers, HD Voice News believes AT&T is much further along than the firm has indicated in public.

The peering capability is potentially important because it represents a chance to create new revenue and business relationships between carriers using the exchanges.

Some think that "peering" necessarily means "settlement-free" peering, but that is not always the case. For tier-one carriers, peering replaces the existing interconnection methods and possibly could enable new business relationships.

Among the obvious potential changes are "settlement-free" arrangements between some carriers with equivalent originating and terminating traffic, as well as "transit" style arrangements for carriers with smaller amounts of terminating traffic.

The SIP exchanges would enable high-definition and multimedia services as well. Aside from new revenue opportunities created by the ability to interconnect end-to-end IP services, the exchanges should reduce the costs of interconnection.

Smaller carriers will note the use of an "IP" interconnection business model. Big carriers will peer, possibly on a settlement-free basis, while smaller carriers might pay the equivalent of IP transit fees to interconnect.

http://hdvoicenews.com/2010/10/18/from-iit-voip-conference-expo-att-sip-transport-powerpoint-slides/

AT&T lays out SIP peering architecture – HD Voice News

More Granular Mobile Data Plans from Verizon Wireless

Verizon's new mobile broadband plans for the Apple iPad seem crafted for usage somewhere between smartphones and PCs.

Smartphone owners typically are expected to consume hundreds of kilobytes a month.

Users of mobile broadband for their notebooks or netbooks might consume a couple gigabytes a month.

Tablets that might be used heavily for content consumption could in some cases represent heavier demand that that, but not as much as many PCs on fixed connections. More granular pricing will be helpful, even though users might be expected to worry that they do not know enough right now to pick the best plan.

Carriers can help by providing better usage tools, communicating with customers and by being more flexible about allowing end users to shift plans when their usage behaviors change.

Users have gotten pretty comfortable with "buckets of usage," and mobile broadband buckets ultimately should be as acceptable as voice buckets have been.

Wireless is Different | AT&T Public Policy Blog

"Unrestricted access rules for wireless networks would hurt users more than help them. They just don’t realize it," writes Fortune.

"Net neutrality would be a serious problem for wireless networks, who all-but-have to prioritize certain types of data-hungry types like say, point-to-point streaming media, over others due to simultaneous usage and current bandwidth limitations," Fortune notes.

"We’ve been making this point for several months now but we can’t emphasize it enough: wireless is simply different," AT&T says on its policy blog.

Wireless is Different | AT&T Public Policy Blog

Fortune article

U.S. Wireless Spectrum to Double?

The amount of wireless spectrum available in the United States would nearly double over the next 10 years as the federal government prepares to gradually auction 500 megahertz of federal and commercial spectrum.

In past decades, new spectrum auctions have been the foundation for potential assaults on industry structure, allowing new contestants to enter the market. Whether that will be the case in the forthcoming auctions remains to be seen.

Clearwire and Sprint have plenty of spectrum, while AT&T and Verizon Wireless are launching new Long Term Evolution networks that are far more spectrally efficient than the third generation networks they will supplement and then replace.

T-Mobile USA needs more 4G spectrum, but probably cannot afford to buy new licenses. The issue is whether any truly-new contestants are willing to take a chance on disrupting the business.

Gov't plans to double available wireless spectrum - Yahoo! News

Samsung Galaxy S to Debut On All 4 Big Carriers

Samsung's flagship Google Android smartphone, Galaxy S, will be available on the AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobileand Verizon Wireless networks.

The Samsung Galaxy S will be called the Samsung Fascinate on Verizon, Samsung Captivate on AT&T, Samsung Vibrant on T-Mobile, and Samsung Epic 4G on Sprint.

Hot Samsung Galaxy S to Debut On Four Big U.S. Carriers - PCWorld

Will Common Carrier Regulation Lead to De Fato Price Regulation?

The Federal Communications Commission says it has no interest in applying price controls to broadband access services. But even if formal rules are not imposed, some executives believe de facto price controls are the logical consequence of any move to regulate broadband access as a common carrier service.

At a minimum, any such rules are likely to immediately slow investment in broadband facilities for years.

The last time the Federal Communications Commission altered fundamental rules in the common carrier area,  AT&T cut annual capital spending by more than half, from $12 billion to $5 billion dollars a year. That cut lasted for four years, until the courts threw out the FCC's mandatory wholesale rules, which created pricing rules service providers found highly damaging, says Dennis Kneale, CNBC media and technology editor.

This time around, the rules might affect a wider range of industry suppliers, including cable and wireless providers, with potentially much-greater damages.

The last time the FCC tried such a major incursion, in the mid-1990s, Stephenson, then the company’s chief financial officer, cut annual capital spending by more than half, from $12 billion to $5 billion dollars a year. That cut lasted for four years, until the courts threw out the FCC mandatory wholesale rules.

Some telecom execs say the FCC’s agenda is downright radical and could thwart high hopes for the wireless Internet, arguably key to the future of the entire U.S. communications industry.

The agency assault could restack the pecking order of winners and losers and reshape their stock prices, affecting the portfolios of millions of retirees and investors as well, says Kneale.

The immediate matter at hand is a prohibition on any type of packet prioritization. But at least some telecom execs also fear this would lead to de facto price controls, primarily because inability to prioritze packets would jeopardize the effort to create enhanced and new services that provide quality of service mechanisms of the sort businesses routinely use.

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AT&T's New Smartphone Plans Could Send iPhone And BlackBerry Sales Through The Roof

AT&T's cheaper tiers of mobile data subscriptions, especially a $15 a month entry-level plan, could boost smartphone sales by making them more affordable to a much bigger market, which in turn should drive bigger unit sales and activations for Apple, Research In Motion, and other companies that sell smartphones at AT&T.

The new plans mean an iPhone becomes a much more affordable option for kids, lower-end users, and basically anyone who was turned off by the requirement to spend a mandatory $30 per month on data access, whether you used it a lot or a little.

AT&T's New Smartphone Plans Could Send iPhone And BlackBerry Sales Through The Roof

AT&T's New Data Plans Will Save Most People Money

BillShrink co-founder & CEO Schwark Satyavolu says AT&T's new data pricing plan is a good thing. Customers will now have the option to save hundreds of dollars over the course of their 2-year contract, and it's just an issue of figuring out how much data you use.

Plus, the cheaper plans could send iPhone and BlackBerry sales through the roof.
However, pricing could be an issue in the future if data usage continues to increase at the rate it has been over the past year and a half.

Here's How AT&T's New Data Pricing Plans Will Save Most People Money

Why Some AT&T Customers Might Want to Stay Away from "MicroCell"

It appears there are at least two distinct customer segments where it comes to use of AT&T's new femtocell offering.

Users who really cannot get decent macrocell coverage in their homes or offices probably will welcome the "MicroCell."

But users who do not have that problem, and want to offload their data traffic to the in-home network, will be better off avoiding the Microcell.

The reason is that data consumed on its MicroCell femtocell will be included in subscribers' newly capped monthly data allowance.

Any 3G data traffic running over the AT&T MicroCell will count towards a user's monthly data limits, just as making voice calls over the Microcell counts towards a user's monthly bucket of minutes.

It is possible to get unlimited calling on the Microcell for $19.99 per month, but this is only for voice calls, not data.

In contrast, Wi-Fi usage does not count towards a subscriber's monthly data limit, even though both access methods use the customer's own fixed broadband connection. Of course, AT&T has to invest capital to acquire, deploy and support the femtocells, so relying on the customer's own equipment makes sense, where possible.

The 3G MicroCell complements Wi-Fi by providing enhanced in-home voice coverage and reliable data when Wi-Fi may not be available -- but it is primarily intended for voice calls.

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AT&T Issues First Warning About Common Carrier Regulation

The great danger of the Federal Communications Commission's drive to regulate broadband access as a common carrier service is that it will choke off investment that is needed if we are to get the 100-Mbps network the FCC says it wants to see built.

Now AT&T has fired the first warning shot, saying it will reevaluate spending on its broadband access networks if the Federal Communications Commission decides to regulate broadband access as a common carrier service, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The warning can hardly come as a surprise. Both policy advocates and financial analysts already have warned that a capital strike is precisely what will happen if Title II regulations are imposed on broadband access.

"We would expect a profoundly negative impact on capital investment," warns Stanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett in a research note to clients.  "The only potential winners are the satellite providers, DirecTV and Dish Network, for whom incremental broadband regulation would dramatically reduce the risk of competitive foreclosure in the video business at the hands of bottleneck broadband providers," he says.

Former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchgott-Roth says the Federal Communications Commission's drive to reclassify broadband access as a common carrier service is "reckless" and "risky," will lead to a dampening of investment in networks, years of legal challenge and replaces an investment climate with a "casino" environment.

Of course, the drive to regulate broadband access as a common carrier service, despite being described as a targeted "third way" between unregulated information services and regulated common carrier services can be no such thing. The service either is an unregulated data service or it is a common carrier service under Title II. There is no permanent middle ground, as the FCC can later apply virtually any Title II common carrier obligations if it so desires, once the change is made.

In fact, the FCC's latest effort is the fourth time the FCC has launched inquiries into the status of information services, concluding three times before (Computer Inquiry I, II and III) that information or enhanced services are in fact to remain unregulated.

"The uncertainty the proposal creates will create a dampening effect on investment in the broadband business,"
says Furchgott-Roth, former FCC commissioner. Companies aren't sure what will happen and will delay
investment until there is certainty, he says.

If the FCC proceeds, and succeeds, "things will be tied up in courts for years an investors will gravitate to areas with greater certainty and opportunity for profit.

"There is a very clear correlation between certainty and investment," says Furchgott-Roth. "Unfortunately, both regulation and uncertainty is where we appear to be headed."

Some policy advocates will dismiss the AT&T threat as bluffing. "If this Title II regulation looks imminent, we have to reevaluate whether we put shovels in the ground," AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson says, according to the Wall Street Journal.

AT&T could cut back spending on its U-Verse home television and Internet service, a move that would damage the FCC's other initiatives to spur more-rapid broadband adoption, at speeds up to 100 Mbps, for 100 million U.S. households.

U-verse service based on AT&T's fiber-to-curb archtiecture now is available to 24 million homes, and AT&T has a target of making it available to 30 million by the end of 2011. But AT&T warns that those plans could grind to a halt if common carrier changes the economics of fiber plant upgrades, which many observers believe is likely.

The reason is simple: common carrier regulation, even if touted as initially having a "light touch," would reverse decades of policymaking in the data services business and give the FCC ability to apply price regulations and wholesale obligations with mandatory pricing. The last time the FCC did that, in the wake of the Telecom Act of 1996, carriers put the brakes on new investment. In fact, Verizon did not begin its aggressive FiOS build until price controls were lifted.

Though the FCC says it won't invoke the most onerous Title II rules, such as regulating pricing, telecom companies worries that posture could be changed easily. And why wouldn't they?

"I'm a 3-2 vote away from the next guy coming in and saying I disagree with that, I take it away," Mr. Stephenson says.

If the FCC is counting on private capital to build the 100-Mbps new networks, and it is, then the drive to impose common carrier regulations virtually everyone expects will dry up investment is an unwise move. Whether the FCC understands this any better than it did in 1996 is questionable.

Sprint May Throttle Heavy Roaming Users

Sprint Nextel Corp. says laptop customers using an excessive amount of mobile data while roaming could have their accounts temporarily suspended, though the carrier still doesn't plan to limit the wireless connection for its high-volume smartphone customers, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The key issue here is heavy roaming use, off the core Sprint network, and the primary reason appears to be that Sprint obviously incurs direct incremental costs when users are on partner networks.

Sprint is changing its policies for data service for laptops users with mobile broadband cards or USB modems will not apply to smartphones.

Sprint already has a cap of 5 gigabytes of data usage within the network, and 300 megabytes of roaming data. Starting July 11, excessive data roaming by mobile laptop users could lead to Sprint suspending the off-network service until the customer's next billing cycle, unless the customer opts into a plan with extra charges for off-network usage.

Sprint says it will notify broadband customers by text message or email when they hit 75 percent and 90 percent of the roaming data limit. The plans include 5 cents per megabyte on the Sprint network and 25 cents when roaming.

The threat of suspension doesn't apply to usage on Sprint's 3G network or the 4G network run by partner Clearwire Corp., says Sprint spokesman Mark Elliott. "Sprint does not, nor plan to limit speeds, nor change a customer's ability to use any particular application or Internet site."

Analysts are expecting an industry-wide shift to control the amount of data traffic consumed by users, so the Sprint move is not unexpected, though Clearwire continues to say it will not cap data usage.

The issue is whether the new move will complicate Sprint's "simplicity" and "simply everything" marketing message.

T Mobile USA already has in place policies to throttle users who exceed the 5 gigabyte monthly cap. AT&T has adopted new caps of 200 megabytes and 2 gigabytes.

Verizon Wireless has not yet made any specific announcements about changes.

So Who'll Follow AT&T's Wireless Pricing Model?

Question: Which Internet access providers will follow AT&T and adopt some form of "bucket-based" access pricing? Answer: Everybody, eventually.

To be sure, Sprint says it has no immediate plans to change its "unlimited" pricing. Sprint Nextel currently has no plans to change its mobile data pricing structure in the wake of AT&T Mobility's decision to move to a usage-based model, according to CEO Dan Hesse, at least for its fourth-generation network and voice devices.

Sprint already has a 5-Gbyte monthly cap for users of its 3G data cards and dongles, though the 4G network has an unlimited plan for dongle and data card users.

Clearwire Corp, 55 percent owned by Sprint Nextel Corp, also plans to keep unlimited data plans. But pricing changes are inevitable.

The reason the WiMAX network can offer unlimited data access across the board is because there are so few users on the network at the moment. That will change.

So Who'll Follow AT&T's Wireless Pricing Model? - Comcast: 'gauging customer interest' in unlimited wireless broadband - dslreports.com

Top-10 U.S. Telecom Sites Suggest

The May 2010 Hitwise report on site traffic has some interesting potential implications for communications service providers.

The top single site was Cricket, a firm historically focused on the wireline replacement market and using value pricing to replicate the unlimited free local calls element of fixed line service.

Verizon has three sites in the top 20, as well as holding spots two and three for traffic.

What is notable is that one of the three Verizon sites is the customer portal, indicating that people are becoming quite comfortable with using the portal for paying bills, asking questions and checking on usage and status information.

AT&T has two sites on the list, and the percentage of traffic for the four leading U.S. mobile carriers mobile sites is in line with their respective market shares.

T-Mobile USA also has two sites in the top 10, one of them its customer service portal, which likewise suggests user comfort with online support, as well as T-Mobile's possible success converting its customers away from paper billing to online-only billing.

Comcast's site in the top-10 also is a customer support portal. Back in the "old" days the top-10 sites were likely to be retail sales and transaction portals. These days, three out of 10 are relatively strictly customer support sites.

What Will Consumers Do When Bandwidth Comes in Buckets?

AT&T's shift to aligning bandwidth consumption and retail pricing will be an important test of how well consumers actually understand how applications are related to bandwidth consumption, and whether price signals that work in virtually all other businesses also will work for mobile bandwidth consumption.

Lots of people think it will prove too challenging for the typial user. That might not be true if easy-to-use bandwidth dashboards are available. People will quickly figure out that video runs the meter hard while almost nothing else has to be thought about.

The other angle is that people are pretty good about figuring out that if "no additional cost" Wi-Fi hotspots can be used, or similar in-home or in-office bandwidth, they will do so, especially when there is a clear perceived value.

But there is really no way to know for sure until lots of users are on the new plans, and have time to adjust their behavior so they are intentional about bandwidth usage. It's really not that different from learning to be intentional about water, electricity, paper, gasoline, calories or just about anything else with real-world externalities.

The larger issue likely will develop as people start to use iPads and other tablet PCs, as well as netbooks, for the simple reason that people consume an order of magnitude more data on a fixed-line-connected PC than on a typical feature phone, or even a smartphone. But consumption patterns will change as the mix of connected devices changes.

Wireless offload to the fixed network will help quite a lot, and should be encouraged, as will easy-to-use and informative dashboards.

Can Clearwire Break Into Top-Five Mobile Ranks?

There being somewhere between 234 million and 238 million mobile customers in the U.S. market, one percent of market share represents about 2.4 million customers.

That means Clearwire now has less than half a percent market share, as it has about a million customers.

WiMAX no longer offering an advantage over Long Term Evolution, despite its headstart in the market for 4G services, one has to wonder whether it is realistic to expect Clearwire to reach the ranks of the top five contenders.

Clearwire is in eighth position at the moment, but with a healthy gap between it and number-seven Leap, which most observers think will become part of another company in the not-too-distant future. MetroPCS is the most-often-mentioned partner.

That would clear the ranks above Clearwire, allowing it to move to spot seven, but with a bigger gap than it now faces for future moves. A merged Leap and MetroPCS would have 12 million to 13 million subscribers.

Clearwire would have to leapfrog US Cellular to take spot number six, assuming US Cellular itself did not wind up as part of one the largest carriers.

One suspects Clearwire's center of gravity will have shifted to wholesale customers, rather than retail, several years into the future, as Sprint and Clearwire's cable customers ramp up sales of 4G services.

Breaking into the  top five retail ranks seems impossibly distant.

AT&T to Hike Early Termination Fees in June for iPhone, Netbook Contracts

AT&T starting June 1, 2010 will be raising early termination fees for new iPhone and mobile-connected netbook subscribers from the current $175 to $325, the Wall Street Journal reports. The move is certain to outrage consumer advocates and put off potential buyers, and certainly will not help reduce the degree of regulatory scrutiny now being focused on early termination fees and contracts.

Some will speculate the move is designed to limit desertions if Verizon Wireless is able to start selling iPhones in 2012. That doesn't make quite so much sense, since a GSM iPhone won't work on the Verizon network.

Perhaps the more-logical explanation is that a new iPhone model expected to be released in June will provoke a large churn of customers from the older models to the new models.

Nor does the move immediately explain why connected netbooks are seeing the higher charge. A customer able to buy a $199 iPhone is getting a subsidy of about $400, since the retail, non-subsidized price would be $599 without a contract. But the netbook subsidy does not appear to represent that large a subsidy. Perhaps a significantly-better retail plan is coming, or AT&T thinks netbook owners will want to substitute an iPad.

On the other hand, maybe AT&T is simply moving to bring its ETFs more in line with Verizon Wireless ETF fees, which likewise were hiked from $175 to $350 for smartphone devices.

AT&T will pro-rate the new fees, which will fall by $10 for each month that passes in the two-year agreement.

Consumer Satisfaction With Video, Wireless Up, Sprint Gains Most

Customer satisfaction with cable and satellite TV rises to its highest level in 10 years, up five percent, with nearly all companies registering improvements, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Sprint Nextel seems to have made the largest gains over the last two years, jumping by double digits for each of the past two years. That's important as Sprint Nextel's customer service was widely seen as the cause of its high churn over the past several years. The improvement in customer satisfaction is mirrored by steadily better churn performance over the last couple of years.

Both Verizon’s FiOS and AT&T’s U-verse lead the way with scores of 73 and 72, respectively. Satellite TV still leads over traditional cable, with Dish Network soaring 11 percent to 71 to overtake rival DirecTV for the first time since 2005.

DirecTV fell four percent to 68 as aggressive pricing promotions by DISH, coupled with a price increase by DirecTV, has the two satellite TV providers moving in opposite directions.

All four of the largest cable providers show some improvement. Charter Communications makes the biggest leap, gaining 18 percent to 60. The company is now statistically tied with Comcast and Time Warner Cable, both up three percent to 61.  Cox Communications gained two percent to 67 to lead all traditional cable companies for a seventh straight year.

“Having enjoyed near-monopoly status in most areas for many years, cable companies had little incentive to provide quality services at a good price,” says Claes Fornell, founder of the ACSI.  “Now that satellite and fiber-optic TV providers have created a competitive challenge to cable, the cable companies have started to step up customer service and realize some gains in customer satisfaction, but they still remain far behind both satellite and fiber-optics.”  

Traditional local and long distance service improved four percent to 75, the highest level in more than a decade.  AT&T is on top after a six-percent surge to 75, followed closely by Cox Communications, unchanged at 74, and Verizon, up three percent to 73. CenturyLink and Comcast round out the bottom of the industry, with CenturyLink gaining three percent to 70 and Comcast rising two percent to 68.

Customer satisfaction with wireless telephone service set a new all-time high for the second consecutive year, rising four percent to 72.  T-Mobile gained three percent to 73, tying for the lead with Verizon Wireless, which declined one percent.

AT&T Mobility improved three percent to 69. Two years after the iPhone was introduced as an exclusive product, AT&T seems to have made strides to relieve some of the strains on its network caused by the rapid influx of iPhone customers.

Sprint Nextel had the largest improvement, gaining 11 percent to 70 a year after a similarly large 13 percent jump, pushing the wireless carrier from well below to very close to the industry average.

Perhaps the most-intriguing bit of commentary provided by ACSI was the brief note that "with wireless looking to be the future of telephone service, providers are ramping up efforts to provide new services, simplified usage plans, and better pricing." Note the language: "wrieless looking to be the future of telephone service."