Lots of Changes in Mobile Business

"In our conversations over the past month, we noticed a potential shift in the relationships and economics between wireless carriers and video content providers," says Rajeev Chand, Rutberg & Co. managing director. And that might be the least of the changes of interest to end users.

"For example, several executives noted to us that certain U.S. carriers reduced or decoupled video content bundles from basic or unlimited data plans," he says. "The result has been a short-term reset in the video content provider economics: rather than carriers pay licensing fees for proprietary or bundled content, to assist in subscriber marketing and growth, carriers are paying licensing fees associated with separate video packages which have different consumer buying processes and patterns."

In other words, instead of using video content as a carrot to drive mobile broadband adoption, it is being marketed as a stand-alone application for which addtional fees are required. Oddly enough, at least some mobile operators might be concluding that it doesn't pay to encourage packaged video consumption, at least at lowish prices, especially when the additional load on networks is considered.

“The threat from over-the-top is now and has never been greater,” says Chand. For wireless carriers, the risk is greatest from the incumbent Internet firms, rather than the startup mobile Internet firms, as consumers know the incumbent brands and navigate directly to them.

In that regard, recent movement in the partnership area between Google and Verizon, and Google and Sprint, is interesting.

Though the potential trend will clarify only when a few more moves are made, it appears that AT&T and Verizon are moving in different directions in terms of mobile Web strategy. Sprint, meanwhile, seems to be taking an approach akin to that of Verizon.

The changes could reshape operating system market shares, strategic role of browsers and the ways "open" network platforms can lead to differentiated service experiences.

The potential shift of strategies has been brewing for some time, and perhaps the most-visible sign has been the debate about whether Verizon would embrace the Apple iPhone once AT&T exclusivity ends.

The equally important, but less visible piece of the puzzle is the development relationship Google already has struck up with Sprint Nextel and Clearwire. As part of those efforts, the Android operating system has gotten a boost.

But AT&T might be distancing itself from Google and turning to a range of partners usually more associated with European operators, from Opera to Nokia. That would explain the rather cryptic remarks overheard at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment about Symbian "having a resurgence in the U.S. market."

That belief would be hard to explain in the absence of some major push by one of the major U.S. carriers to support Symbian-based devices and applications. Right now, the thinking seems to be that AT&T is considering such a move.

But it would likely be a mistake to characterize the shifts as merely instrumental or confined to market shares for various ecosystem participants.  The more important change is the differentiated end user experiences that would be possible.

Though details are sketchy at the moment, the new Google-Verizon collaboration might lead to a distinctive set of user interfaces, applications and devices optimized for the mobile Web, and for users with different key interests.

In the new scenario, carriers would be able to compete on differentiated experience, not just unique handsets, payment models, package elements or device features.

Though one line of thinking is that "open" networks will lead to service providers becoming "dumb pipes," the new approaches aim to create differentiated and packaged experiences that have service providers acting in a more traditional role.

As Verizon seems to be positioning its Google collaboration, the service provider would create Android devices carrying the operator's brand and software portfolio, though other Android devices with less integration also would be available.

What is intriguing here is the use of third party and open development, in conjunction with carrier packaging, to produce a flourishing of end user options. Instead of commodity-like devices with a a set look, feel and function, one might see devices optimized for particular end user verticals.

3% Consume 40% of Mobile Bandwidth, AT&T Says

The top three percent of smartphone users consume 40 percent of all mobile data bandwidth, says AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets president Ralph de la Vega. Those three percent of users also consume 13 times the data of the average smart phone user, he adds. Another way of quantifying such usage is to note that users who consume 40 percent of AT&T's mobile data bandwidth constitutute just 0.9 percent of all AT&T postpaid mobile subscribers.

The point was clear enough: Without adequate management of network access, most customers will find their experience damaged because of a small number of other users.

There are legitimate public policy concerns about anti-competitive behavior in the wireless and wireline businesses where it comes to gatekeepers of any sort using that power to impair competition. But that is a different and distinct matter from the obvious need to manage shared network resources in ways that actually preserve reasonable access for all other users.

De la Vega used the word "crowd out" to describe such contention, and it is a legitimate issue. Anti-competitive actions certainly are to be protected against. But there are valid network resource managment issues that obviously have to be addressed as well, especially in the wireless domain.

Beyond that, there are valid reasons for wanting competition protected, but without stifling consumer access to new products that offer mass market customers features enterprise users take for granted, such as the ability to prioritize their own use of bandwidth to perserve performance of mission-critical applications. If any consumer end user wants to prioritize their own video, voice or other bits, they ought to be able to do so.

There is nothing anti-competitive about this, so long as any applications in the class can receive such prioritization. Consumer advocates are right to note that issues can arise if voice bits sold by the ISP can be prioritized, but not voice bits sold by other competing service providers.

Some approaches will work better than others, and that is an issue one would hope policymakers take seriously into account as new "neutrality" rules are crafted.

Telemedicine Spending to Approach $3.6 Billion Annually by 2014

Wireless service providers likely will be key beneficiaries of increased spending on tele-medicine services and devices will generate nearly $3.6 billion in annual revenue within the next five years, says Pike & Fischer Senior Analyst Tim Deal.

The need to control health care costs, along with the development and expansion of faster wireless broadband networks, smartphones, and data compression solutions, will drive the market growth, Deal says.

Wireless applications, devices, and services solutions will account for more than 70 percent of the total market spend within five years.

Driving that spending is the economic stimulus law that President Obama signed earlier this year. That initiative includes $20 billion for health information technology, with a specific focus on electronic medical records and telemedicine, Deal says.

"We project that at least 25 percent of the $20 billion in stimulus funds earmarked for health information technology will be applied toward broadband-enabled telemedicine services such as remote patient monitoring and mobile access to medical records, and consumer applications such as interactive fitness guides and mobile health-related videos," says Deal.

AT&T will have the largest presence in this market, followed closely by Verizon and Sprint Nextel, Deal projects.

FCC Chair Promises More Mobile Spectrum

"What happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a Blackberry Tour or whatever the next device is?" asks Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski."What happens when we quadruple the number of subscribers with mobile broadband on their laptops or netbooks?"

"The short answer: we will need a lot more spectrum," he says. So look for the FCC to explore ways to promote spectrum efficiency and use of Wi-Fi, for example.
 
"Wi-Fi allows carriers to offload to fixed broadband as much as 40 percent of traffic in the home, freeing up capacity of licensed spectrum," he says.

But even efficiency measures do not alleviate the need for more spectrum. So the FCC chairman says he will work on reallocating spectrum currently being used for other purposes.

U.S. Wireless Data Hits New High

Wireless data service revenues climbed to more than $19.4 billion for the first half of 2009, CTIA-The Wireless Association says. This represents a 31 percent increase over the first half of 2008. In addition, wireless data revenues were more than 25 percent of all wireless service revenues.

The survey also found that more than 246 million data-capable devices are in use, while more than 40 million of these devices are Ssmartphones or wireless-enabled PDAs. More than 10 million are wireless-enabled laptops, notebooks or aircards.

More than 740 billion text messages carried on carriers’ networks during the first half of 2009, roughly 4.1 billion messages per day. That’s nearly double the number from last year, when only 385 billion text messages were reported for the first half of 2008.

Wireless subscribers are also sending more pictures and other multi-media messages with their mobile devices—more than 10.3 billion MMS messages were reported for the first half of 2009, up from 4.7 billion in mid-year 2008.

As of June 2009, the industry survey recorded more than 276 million wireless users. This represents a year-over-year increase of nearly 14 million subscribers.

Wireless customers used more than 1.1 trillion minutes in the first half of 2009—breaking down to 6.4 billion minutes-of-use per day—and six-month wireless service revenues of nearly $76 billion.

Study Finds Consumers Do Not Want Targeted Ads

“Contrary to what many marketers claim, most adult Americans (66 percent) do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests, s new study from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Annenberg Public Policy Center suggests.

“Moreover, when Americans are informed of three common ways that marketers gather data about people in order to tailor ads, even higher percentages— between 73 percent and 86 percent—say they would not want such advertising,” the Annenberg study says.

Respondents showed somewhat more interest in receiving personalized discounts and news, but still, less than one-half of Americans wanted any tailored Web content at all.

That was true of consumers in every age group—even young adults ages 18 to 24 were more likely to say no to behavioral targeting than to accept it, except for discounts.

More than two thirds of respondents to the Annenberg/Berkeley study felt they had lost control over their personal information. At the same time, however, they believed businesses handled their data well and that they were already protected by current regulations.

One suspects the responses might be different if consumers are asked whether they would be willing to receive tailored messages in exchange for some other tangible benefit, such as lower Internet access costs, free text or lower-cost voice, discounts or other tangible benefits.

The precedent is TV commercials. Just about everybody says they do not like commercials. But if asked whether they would rather watch TV without commercials, if the cost were higher, most people then say they will choose an ad-supported service.

Enterprise Telecom Spend Now $1500 to $2000 Per Employee, Says Gartner

North American enterprises spent between $1,500 and $2,000 per employee on telecoms services in 2008, say analysts at Gartner. Total telecom spending represents about 20 percent of IT budgets. Wireless spending represents about 15 percent to 30 percent of total telecom spending but remains both the strongest growth category.

Fixed services continue dominate spending primarily due to enterprise spending on data networks.

But enterprises are shifting the way they buy services. Wireline services generally are sourced from multiple providers, as you might expect, given the regional nature of fixed access networks.

Wireless services ncreasingly are sourced on a national basis, when possible. That also makes sense since the tier one mobile providers offer nationwide service.

Contracts that combine buying of fixed and wireless service are more popular when possible, as they generally lead to volume discounts.

MPLS rates fell by double digits in 2008 as enterprises squeeze their VPN transport accounts, Gartner says.

The average North American fixed services contract is a three-year deal with an incumbent provider, although cost concerns have proven a boon for alternative providers and technologies such as audioconferencing.

Enterprises increasingly are bundling wireless with wired services to gain volume discounts, Gartner says. As a result, enterprises have reduced total communicatons spending.

T-Mobile UK Offers "Free Texting for Life"

It appears a "free text messages for life" promotion lead to the highest-ever single-month gain in new subscribers for T-Mobile UK in September 2009.

T-Mobile UK gained an estimated 100,000 net new subscribers in September, compared to a net loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first six months of the year.

The promotion runs month to month, allowing any users that tops up a prepaid subscriber information module to £10, in any month, unlimited texting the next month. So the promotion requires subscribers to top up their prepaid accounts to that level, every month, to keep the "unmlimited texting" feature.

Growth in T-Mobile UK's prepaid business accounted for most of the increase in the month, but the company says there was also a "healthy increase" in the number of contract customers in the period.

The thing about mobility is that it is a multi-product business, allowing service providers a number of options for "merchandising" features to enhance new customer acquisition, retention, revenue or profit margin. In this case, T-Mobile UK has opted for merchandising of text messaging to boost customer acquisition and retention.

Is Net Neutrality Possible?

It has been quite some time since the typical service provider executive has had confidence about the stability of rules governing the communications business. To greater or lesser degrees, there has been some element of regulatory instability and uncertainty since the mid-1990s, to go along with heightened market uncertainty.

Investors and executives do not like uncertainty. Yet greater uncertainty is likely what the industry now faces as the Federal Communications Commission ponders new rules about network neutrality, wireless competition and national broadband policy.

The latest reason for heightened uncertainty is the fundamental nature of questions inevitably raised by some of the regulatory discussions and rule makings, and the time it will take to sort out the application of the rules.

How does regulation separate "common carrier" obligations carriers may have from content rights they may have as providers of their own information and content services?

What does "common carriage" mean in an Internet era, for Internet-delivered services that might not work reliably and consistently in a strict "best effort" delivery mode?

What scope exists for "private IP" services provided to consumer users, much as business users have the right to buy "private IP" services that allow prioritization of packets?

How can regulation provide fair and equitable treatment of like services when the fundamental regulatory frameworks apply to different providers?

How does the framework handle instances where a "service" or "application" provider also acts as a "carrier"? When it is impossible to prevent a single legal entity from acting simultaneously as an information provider and a service provider and an application provider and a carrier, how does regulation handle the contradictions between treatment of roles?

Above all, will the sum total of new rules create more freedom, or less? And when freedom for one actor conflicts with freedom for another, how will balance be maintained?

The answers ultimately will matter for reasons other than perhaps-abstract notions about extending or squashing freedom; protecting individuals and companies from the power of government. At a time when everybody agrees that continued robust investment in facilities is in the public and national interest, how will the new rules affect investment and innovation?

The issue is not so much whether the outcome is greater freedom for application providers--that certainly will happen no matter what the outcome--but whether facilities providers also have freedom to change their business models to take advantage of new freedoms.

Virtually all regulators assume that the proof of deregulatory success is that incumbents lose market share and revenue. Some financial pain, inflicted on incumbents,  therefore is the whole point of deregulation.

But there is some point beyond which the infliction of pain must stop, or wider disruption of core facilities is impaired.

A rational observer might argue that "level playing fields" have yet to be fully created.. The issue is when such a point will have been reached, and how we will know it.

Social Media is Made for Mobile

Social media is about conversations. Mobile phones are about conversations. Social networking is about conversations. So how much insight is required to figure out that social media and social networking are about mobiles?

Today, every major social network offers its users a range of mobile services, from mobile web access to downloadable mobile applications. Although consumers with high-end devices may be the primary users of these mobile services, some social networks also offer a number of SMS-driven features that allow consumers to stay engaged by text, even on low-end mobile phones.

According to Nielsen, more than three million Twitter users in the United States regularly access the service using their mobiles. Additionally, many consumers are frequently using Twitter though text messaging and a range of downloadable mobile applications for iPhone, BlackBerry and other mobile devices. In fact, those third party applications might represent as much as 80 percent of mobile Twitter use, suggesting there could be as many as 15 million U.S. mobile Twitter users.

According to Nielsen, about 15 percent of Facebook users (11 million) in the U.S. regularly access the social network's mobile web version, plus three million users who use text messaging for Facebook access. There also are third party apps for mobile Facebook use as well.

More than 4.6 million users use the mobile version of YouTube as well, Nielsen says.

Net Neutrality Not Good for Real-Time Services?

One of the unknowns at the moment is how any proposed Federal Communications Commission network neutrality rules might affect a service provider's ability to offer quality-assured services.

That's possibly important for any users or providers of real-time services (voice and video), since bandwidth alone is not a guarantee of quality experience.

Real-time services are highly sensitive to latency and delay. The issue then is whether consumers will have the option of buying services optimized for real-time services.

Think of this as an end-user opportunity to buy bandwidth services that are akin to the Akamai content delivery service currently available to businesses.

Mobile Web Use Explodes

As is always the case, the highest growth rates for any product or service come when growth starts at a low base. And that seems to be the case for mobile Web usage, which over the last year has grown faster among users 65 years old, or older.

Over the last year, users 65 or older adopted mobile Web behaviors at a 67 percent rate.

The other trend of note is rapid growth at the other end of the demographic scale. Users between 13 and 17 increased their mobile Web usage by 45 percent. That means teens are buying smart phones, or having smart phones bought for them.

Casual Use Biggest PC-Based Mobile Broacband Segment?

Mobile broadband services used by PC owners likely will follow the pattern seen recently in the U.S. mobile phone business, where prepaid payment plans have grown at the expense of postpaid plans.

By 2011, only 40 percent of PC mobile broadband users will be on long-term monthly contracts, says  Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis principal. Most will use prepaid, casual use or “free” access, he predicts.

In fact, the strongest growth probably will come in the casual use segment.

Is Mobile Broadband a Commodity?

Most industry observers tend to think and behave as though "voice" were a commodity, and there is some truth to the notion, at least on the wholesale, carrier-to-carrier or carrier-to-enterprise level. I would dispute the notion that voice, in all its permutations, actually fits the definition of a commodity, but for the moment let's look at mobile broadband.

Is mobile broadband a commodity? Can it replace a fixed broadband connection. As this chart suggests, the answer largely is "no." A mobile service easily can displace a single consumer voice line or simple Internet applications such as email. But it isn't so clear email access is what people generally mean when thinking about mobile broadband.

At the other extreme, high-quality linear entertainment video is virtually impossible to replicate in the mobile domain, so IPTV, for example, has no direction equivalent in the wireless domain. Other applications are somewhere between "mostly" substitutable and "not" substitutable.

The point is that a product probably isn't a full "commodity" if full substitution is not possible, or is possible, but without fully interchangeable value. So far, mobile broadband does not seem to be a "commodity" fully capable of replacing a fixed broadband line.

There are many reasons, including vastly different speeds, usage caps and pricing. Then there is the demographic element. It is easier to consider substitution when a single-user household is concerned, hardest when multi-member families are concerned.

The value of a fixed broadband connection grows with the degree of bandwidth sharing and total number of devices to be supported. One fixed broadband connection might make more sense than five mobile broadband connections, for example.

The other angle is that linear multi-channel entertainment video is just a discrete application delivered over a fixed broadband connection, and there is as of yet no mobile substitute. So despite outward appearances, mobile and fixed broadband are not fully-exchangeable substitutes, and hence not true commodities.

Monetizing Broadband: Something has to Give

Inevitably, Verizon Communications Chief Technology Officer Richard Lynch would get attention in mentioning that the broadband industry “will see a pricing paradigm shift” because Internet service providers “cannot continue to grow the Internet without passing the cost on to someone.”

Lynch's remarks would come as no surprise to anybody who follows revenue-per-bit trends in the broadband access business. It has been clear for some time that, as access bandwidth increases, revenue is not keeping pace.

Service providers have some room to deal with the widening gap, by adding new revenue-producing services and applications, managing cost and so forth. But there is not unlimited room to juggle cost elements.

At some point, higher bandwidth, which customers want to buy and service providers want to sell, will require investments with a more-linear payback mechanisms.

That likely means new ways of pricing bandwidth consumption. That probably doesn't mean a shift to fully-metered usage, as consumers do not like it, and such an approach undoubtedly would depress consumption and therefore stifle new applications and services.

But there are lots of other, more-palatable alternatives, namely "buckets" of usage analogous to the ways people now buy voice services or text messaging. Bigger buckets will cost more money; smaller buckets will cost less.

And if network neutrality rules are not onerous, service providers might be able to create service tiers with quality of service mechanisms, much as business customers are able to buy, though basic "best effort" plans likely would coexist.

“We are going to reach a point where we will sell packages of bytes,” Lynch says. Those packages might also offer differentiated quality of service.

Consumption at "off peak" hours might be offered at prices lower than equivalent consumption at peak hours, for example. Whether optional packages could be offered that allow end users to prioritize some applications, as businesses do, will not be clear until after new network neutrality rules are clarified. And that is going to take some time.

Prepaid Mobile Declining in Western Europe

In Western Europe, the prepaid share of total mobile connections varies significantly by country, but on average it was 57 percent at the end of 2008. Yankee Group is forecasting that figure to decline to 47 percent by 2013. In developing markets, prepaid dominates. For example, in Latin America prepaid accounts for 84 percent of mobile connections today. Yankee Group is predicting this percentage will remain flat during the next five years.

70% of Mobile Users Planned Mobile Spending Cuts. Have They?

An October 2008 survey by Getjar suggests users were planning significant changes in mobile consumption in response to the recession. It still isn't completely clear whether people actually followed through with action, what adjustments they might have made, or how how much less they might have spent.

About 70 percent of mobile phone users who partcipated in the survey suggested they planned to reduce the amount they spend on phone usage. So far, the revenue impact remains hard to quantify, though.

MVNO Business to Grow Outside North America, Europe

The mobile virtual network operator business is headed for growth, and most will come from regions other than North America and Western Europe, says TeleGeography.

Globally, growth in wireless subscribers has been driven predominantly by explosive growth in a small number of developing countries, such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan. These are countries in which MVNOs are either prohibited or at a nascent stage of development, so the ultimate impact on the MVNO market is not yet clear.

In 2003 MVNOs accounted for seven percent of subscribers in Western Europe and North America. At the end of June 2009 wireless subscribers had grown by almost 60 percent in these two regions to reach 800 million, and MVNOs’ share had increased to over nine percent.

In contrast, from 2003 to mid-2009 the number of wireless subscribers in regions other than Western Europe and North America more than quadrupled to reach some 3.5 billion. However, MVNOs have yet to make much impact in these higher growth markets: outside of Western Europe and North America, their share of the market remains less than 0.5 percent.

So while MVNOs have been growing strongly in Western Europe and North America, those two regions account for an ever-smaller portion of the world’s wireless subscriber base – it slipped from almost 40 percent to less than 20 percent. That suggests that future MVNO subscriber growth necessarily will come from other regions.

In 2003, Western Europe and North America accounted for well over 90 percent of all MVNO subscribers and, despite some growth elsewhere, these two regions still account for over 80 percent of the total.

TeleGeography’s latest research predicts that MVNO growth will gain momentum all around the world over the coming five years, as MVNOs are legalized in new countries where they are not allowed at present.

Will Net Neutrality Lead to Higher Prices?

One can make some reasonable guesses about likely outcomes as the Federal Communications Commission weighs new network neutrality rules.

If new proposed rules disallow traffic shaping measures such as slowing peer-to-peer or other traffic at times of peak congestion, the problem of alleviating peak-hour congestion will still have to be dealt with.

If the goal is to manage peak traffic load, and service providers cannot shape traffic by slowing some protocols, or slowing all traffic for users who have exceeded their usage caps, then other available mechanisms will be used.

And price is one of the most-likely tools.

Customers might not like it, but it always is possible to discourage usage by raising prices. And it always is possible to boost usage by lowering prices. And it is wireless plans where the price hikes--or user policing of usage--will be most felt.

If usage caps are tightened, consumers will have the option of spending more, or using less.

That doesn't mean "unlimited" service packages will disappear. Some customers will want to buy them. But the price of such packages likely is going to rise. For similar reasons, usage-based charging is likely to increase for most other plans as well. That will encourage users to monitor their usage and make choices that will alleviate peak hour strain on networks.

As a practical matter, wired network operators already refrain from blocking access to lawful applications, and traffic shaping rules already are tweaked so the policies do not constitute "blocking" or "slowing" of lawful traffic.

But wireline operators have more access bandwidth than wireless providers do. So Oppenheimer financial analyst Tim Horan suggests that wireless usage caps will become more stringent.

Among other possible strategies is structuring pricing to encourage more usage off-peak, as is the case for voice plans.

Application blocking is less an issue than most assume on wired networks, and is a relatively minor irritant for most wireless users, but a significnat irritant for some users on wireless networks.

The real trick is how service providers will handle peak hour loading under new conditions where traffic priorities cannot be applied, as typically is the case for many private enterprise networks.

One other observation also is in order. As was the case the last time a major change in communications regulation was made, with the Telecom Act of 1996, there will be a period of legal wrangling to test and flesh out the rules.

Though most within the communications business would vastly prefer more predictability of business environment, that is not what they are likely to get.

Are U.S. Mobile Service Plans Expensive? Or Affordable?

Are U.S. mobile users paying too much?
Some data might suggest so. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, suggests that U.S. prices are "high," based on a standard set of usage buckets.

But there's a problem. Most U.S. users talk about four times as much as some Europeans do.

The problem is that the OECD study uses definitions of "low," "medium" and "high" use that might describe usage in the Netherlands, but are wildly inapplicable to typical U.S. usage rates, says George Ford, Chief Economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies.

Specifically, the OECD analysis calls 44 outbound minutes a month "low," 114 outbound minutes medium and 246 minutes outbound "high" levels of usage.

The average mobile consumer in the United States uses 800 minutes a month, about four times as high as the OECD "high usage" level. Furthermore, the OECD considers 55 text messages a month to be "high use" where the typical U.S. mobile user sends or receives 400 text messages a month.

Since usage plans are directly related to usage, this is an issue that distorts the comparisons, difficult to make under the best of conditions. By definition, the "average" U.S. user is a "high usage" customer. So if U.S. users kept the same behavior patterns, but had to buy plans as the OECD baskets suggest, they would have to pay rates commensurate with very-high usage levels.

In other words, if users in a given country have low usage, and are on low usage plans, then average prices paid will tend to be "lower." In the United States, usage is vastly higher than in Europe.

Normalizing for usage volume, what one finds is that U.S. users pay modest prices for much-higher use. If users in the Netherlands had consumption patterns identical to U.S. mobile users, they would pay very-high prices.

In other words, one cannot simply compare low-usage plans in one country with high-usage plans in another, any more than one can compare low-usage plans in one country with high-usage plans in the same country. The results are not terribly meaningful.