AT&T Reports Ap 22: What to Look For

AT&T reports first quarter results on April 22. I suspect most of us will be watching for any weakness in wireless net additions or average revenue per user. Everybody expects residential voice lines to decline, so the issue there might be a slowing of the rate of loss. Business customer revenues likely will be considered a success if growth essentially is flat.

A consumer landline loss in the 10 to 12 percent range is probably to be expected, while enterprise segment revenue likely will be off a couple to several points. None of that would be unexpected.

Video entertainment subscribers should grow, but will not likely have a material effect. Broadband net additions will be less robust than in the first quarter of 2008.

Canadians Heavy Online Video Consumers

In February 2009 21 million Canadians viewed more than 3.1 billion videos online, says comScore. The average Canadian online video viewer spent 10 hours viewing videos in February, up 53 percent from their average viewing time last year.

Shift in Unified Communications Value?

By the end of the year, or at least within the next couple of years, we all might have a different perspective on unified communications, traditionally viewed as something involving business phone systems, instant messaging and conferencing apps.

There are several reasons, among them a view that the "value of traditional desk phone and desktop PC is diminishing." Remote workers and mobility might become the lead value proposition for some buyers. For others, there might be an equally strong shift to IP-based conferencing as the lead application, based on "economic uncertainty as companies look to cut cost" in areas such as travel.

Integration of communication functions directly with business applications is an on-going and underlying trend that likewise could shift attention on UC value.

http://horizonwatching.typepad.com/horizonwatching/2009/04/primer-on-unified-communications.html

97% of Business Communications Now is Email

As much as 97 percent of all business communications now occurs using email, says Bakbone. And though some executives would not place much credence on the financial impact of email outages, which some estimate can cost a 500-person enterprise about $1.5 million in lost productivity, the cost of paying employees who cannot use basic business communications such as email has been calculated by multiplying the total hours of downtime per year by $18,000 per hour.

For an enterprise of any size, that cost can range from “up to $100,000” to “up to $500,000,” Bakbone says. Then there is the cost of information technology resources that must be consumed to get email systems back in operation.

Whether one considers such soft costs significant or not, the typical email outage lasts 69 minutes, and annual email outages can total 32.1 hours a year, Bakbone says.

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/offer.aspx?o=03830006em0420

Sampling Works at iPhone App Store

Encouraging potential customers to sample your wares is a time-tested demand stimulation technique, and it seems to work on the Apple App Store as well, an analysis of data by Flurry indicates. Among the strongest marketing plays in the App Store are free trials of a game or application.

There's not much surprise about why this works. Potential buyers unfamiliar with a company or application can see for themselves whether any particular app is useful or entertaining before committing to a purchase.

66 Million U.S. Consumers Now Multi-Task

Over 66 million consumers are using the Internet while camped out on their sofas watching TV, according to market research firm In-Stat. About a third of male respondents to a recent survey say they "sometimes" do so. About 25 percent of female respondents say they use a PC while watching TV.

One-fifth of all respondents reported doing instant messaging while watching TV.

That's both good news and bad news. The good news is it suggests there might be some upside for content, application providers and service providers in the area of integrating PC, mobile or Web features with the TV experience.

The bad news? One reason some people might be time-sharing is because the TV content is not that compelling, compared to alternative pursuits such as using the Internet.

$5 Billion Less Consumer Spending on Mobile, Broadband, TV?

Though first quarter financial results are not yet available to confirm the possible existence of the trend, about 15 percent of respondents say they will cut back spending on subscription-TV, broadband, and mobile services in response to economic pressures, an In-Stat survey finds. Precisely what that means is the question.

If any significant trend of that sort emerges, U.S. consumers could cut spending on mobile, broadband and pay TV services by nearly $5 billion due to economic turmoil, In-Stat says.

Will consumers drop mobile, broadband or multi-channel video subscriptions completely, or simply shift consumption to more-affordable subscriptions? The former would cause a greater hit to revenue and a risk that customers do not return later, the latter might "simply" pressure on average revenue per user.

In the fourth quarter of 2008, a slowing rate of growth could be seen for at least some services, but it was hard to separate purely-economic effects from product maturation. So far, mobile service providers have seen a shift to prepaid services from postpaid.

It wouldn't be unusual to see consumers dropping some premium services or postponing upgrades in the face of a tough recession. What would make news is negative growth for subscription services other than wired voice, which has been declining, at least for some providers, for years.

We'll find out soon enough what is going on.

WeFi, fring expand VoIP over Wi-Fi Options

WeFi Inc, an open global Wi-Fi network, and fring, a leading mobile Internet community and communication service, today launched the WeFi add-on for fring that gives users mobile access to the largest database of 20 million Wi-Fi access points worldwide, said to be growing by over one million a month.

The new WeFi add-on for fring provides users with easy and free access to millions of Wi-Fi hotspots from their mobile devices. The alpha test of this service has been particularly popular with business and pleasure travelers, WeFi says.

The WeFi add-on currently works on hundreds of Symbian and Windows Mobile devices with the latest version of fring which can be downloaded or upgraded from www.fring.com/download/.

A full list of supported handsets is available at www.fring.com/download/default_PC.asp.

To locate and access millions of hotspots from these mobile devices, users simply select the WeFi add-on from the add-ons tab within fring. Users can locate their Wi-Fi hotspot location automatically using their handset’s GPS capability, or manually by typing in any address worldwide.

www.fring.com/download/

Bandwidth Caps a Competitive Disadvantage?

Time Warner Cable has shelved its plans to shift its residential broadband customers to “consumption-based billing”, at least for the moment, as a way of controlling excessive bandwidth use by a small number of really-heavy users and maintaining quality of service for other users who share the network. Short of investing in a higher-capacity access network, it isn't clear how some way of matching consumption to cost is avoidable, long term.

But that points out one advantage Verizon Communications has: it has ample access bandwidth to provide uncapped usage, which could become a marketing weapon wherever it competes with other providers who do impose caps or other sorts of restrictions.

http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/stories/2009/04/20/story5.html?ana=from_rss

Bandwidth Caps Driving Dissatisfaction?

One wonders whether consumer outrage about Time Warner Cable's bandwidth caps play some role in Time Warner Cable's low consumer happiness ratings.

Time Warner ranks on this March 2009 survey as low as Charter, which never has had especially high consumer satisfaction ratings.

Frankly, we are used to seeing Time Warner rank higher than this.

Ranking that low--equivalent to Charter-- is absolutely nothing to be proud of, and quite a change from past years.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/162928/time_warner_changes_but_keeps_bandwidth_caps.html?tk=rss_main

Twitter Crosses the Chasm

There's a difference between early adopters and mass markets. That being the case, Twitter is crossing an adoption chasm.  Early adopters will look around for the next new thing, because it won't be so much fun now that "everybody" is discovering it.

But what also is likely to occur is that Twitter's usefulness now will grow, as the reason most people use tools is that they are useful. Twitter is now about to find its place as something so useful most people will find they want to use it.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=135899

Virgin Mobile Wants Greater Share of Prepaid Mobile Market

Presumably first quarter financial results will show continued growth in uptake of prepaid wireless plans in the U.S. mobile market. Virgin Mobile USA

hopes to capitalize on the trend, as it has cut its unlimited calling plan from $80 to $50 a month.

Two of Virgin's other monthly calling plans also get a price cut. The 300-anytime minute plan was cut to $30 from $35. The 400 anytime minutes plan was reduced from $50 to $40.

Text-only plans also are offered: the new Texter's Delight plan costs $15 a month for 1000 messagesa month. An unlimited texting plan is available for $20. Those plans include photo, instant messaging and video messages as well as SMS. Voice calls cost 10 cents per minute.

Virgin has also introduced a Pink Slip Protection (PSP) program. To be eligible for PSP, customers must be a Virgin Mobile USA customer for two consecutive months prior to losing a job, and become eligible for state unemployment benefits within 12 months. Virgin Mobile will cover the costs of a plan including taxes and surcharges for up to three months.

IP Voice Innovation Lags Text, Despite GoogleVoice

One is hard pressed to point to new voice apps, beyond integrated text messaging, find-me, follow-up or visual voice mail, that have become mass market IP voice applications. Dialing from a directory or "click to dial" are helpful, but the bigger changes so far are a simple switch to VoIP in place of plain old telephone service.

The next trend is IP voice on mobile devices, where it has to this point been seen in a "voice from PCs or telephone adapters" scenario.

Contrast that with the pace of development in text-based communications, ranging from text messaging to instant messaging to email to blogging to tweeting. One is tempted to conclude that voice innovation is hampered in part because of its relative complexity, relative incremental cost and an underlying shift in the direction of text communications (messaging) overall.

That isn't to say such voice innovation will not occur; simply that it apparently is harder than innovation in the messaging arena.

http://symbianapplications.info/battle-of-the-google-voice-iphone-apps-voicecentral-vs-gv-mobile/

Online Video Viewing Up 2%, Streams Per Viewer Up 7%

Online video viewing was up in March 2009, says Nielsen Online. Unique viewers grew 1.9 percent year over year. Total streams viewed grew 8.7 percent year over year. Streams per viewer grew 6.7 percent and time spent per viewer grew 12.6 percent.

The central question here is whether linear TV can survive a shift to online viewing. So far, the evidence suggests that the rush to online video “screens” hasn’t necessarily hurt linear TV. At least not yet.

We'll know a bit more once all the first quarter 2009 reports are in, but as of the fourth quarter 2008 there was a net addition of  441,000 subscribers to multi-channel TV services, compared to the start of 2008.

Still, there is no shortage of thinking about how long this can continue.

Building an Ad-Supported Text Messaging Business

Many observers think communication service providers have got to create new revenue streams in partnership with business partners, rather than basing 100 percent of revenue on end users who pay for communication capabilities.

As always is the case for a developing business based on partnerships, partners will differ about the relative values they are bringing to the relationships, as well as relative revenue splits. Ad-supported text messaging campaigns are no different.

“For advertising-supported SMS, the net revenue per message is $0.004, and the carriers dispute this, but that’s the reality of the business,” says David Oberholzer, Limbo VP. “The model isn’t completely solid, and it’s unrealistic to think the CPMs (cost per thousand) we’ll be able to charge will go up dramatically, so it’s unrealistic for carriers trying to impose these types of per-message fees.

“Even relatively small carrier fees will drive out innovation to other platforms, and that’s already happening—look at all the advertising in iPhone apps,” he says. “If carriers raise costs, then that will be exacerbated.”

All of this will get worked out over time, but the issue illustrates the problem: a new and somewhat experimental new business requires nurturing and some degree of give and take between ecosystem partners.