Sky Becomes a Quadruple-Play Service Provider

U.K.-based Sky is about to enter the U.K. mobile service provider market, becoming a mobile virtual network operator using the Telefónica UK network in 2016.

The move will make Sky a quadruple-play services provider, as it already sells fixed line high speed access, fixed network voice and video entertainment.

Sky is the second-largest provider of consumer high speed access, with more than five million customers. Sky also sells a triple-play package to 40 percent of all its customers.

Telefónica UK will give Sky wholesale access to 2G, 3G and 4G services over its nationwide network.

Telefónica UK also is the wholesale supplier for the largest MVNO, Tesco Mobile. The latest move by Sky simply illustrates the fact that the consumer telecom market now is based on triple-play or quadruple-play offers, not discrete services.

AT&T Revenue Contributors Will Change Significantly After DirecTV, Iuacell, Nextel Mexico Acquisitions

AT&T’s proposed acquistions of DirecTV, Iusacell and Nextel Mexico would have a material impact on revenue segments, dramatically boosting video entertainment and broadband segment revenues and business customer revenues, while dramatically reducing exposure to consumer wireless services.

If you think the U.S. mobile marketing war is about to become even more intense, with Google’s entry into the business, the revenue contributor changes might be a very good thing for AT&T.

TracFone's "Unlimited" Plan Really Wasn't, FTC Says

TracFone Wireless, the largest prepaid mobile service provider in the United States, has been ordered by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to refund $40 million to customers whose “unlimited” service either was throttled or suspended.

The issue is the advertising of “unlimited” prepaid data service plans that include a provision for a reduction of speed after a certain threshold of usage. Such throttled access speed cannot be advertised that way, the FTC concluded.

Since 2009, TracFone’s ad campaigns touted  “unlimited talk, text, and data.” But TracFone drastically slowed or cut off consumers’ mobile data after they used more than certain fixed limits in a 30-day period

The FTC complaint says TracFone violated the FTC Act by advertising unlimited mobile data service while failing adequately to disclose that it imposed material restrictions on the quantity and speed of data for customers who used more than a fixed amount in a given service period.

FCC Clarifies: Hotels Cannot Block Use of Personal Hotspots

The Federal Communications Commission has clarified that hotels cannot block other mobile hotspots while guests are on the property. That, the FCC is, is a violation of Section 333 of

the Communications Act.

The ruling actually confirms what some argue, namely that network neutrality rules probably are not needed to prevent many forms of potential anti-competitive behavior. The FCC has for years adhered to policies that prevent blocking or interference with lawful apps.

So despite some popular rhetoric, blocking or slowing down rival apps is not a problem that requires additional authority. The FCC already has such policies in place.

Internet freedom, in the sense of the ability of any consumer to use any lawful app, is not really an issue the FCC is unable to address with current tools, some would generally argue.

Where the debate actually does involve new concepts is the existence and use of content delivery networks or caching networks that improve content or application latency, as used all the way to end user devices. Such content delivery networks routinely are used by applications over the wide area network.

It’s good that the FCC has clarified, once again, that blocking is not lawful in the consumer Internet domain. But the action also shows that “blocking” of lawful apps is not a problem, even is some claim it is.

Google Will Switch Access Between Sprint, T-Mobile US, Wi-Fi Dynamically

Although we typically believe smaller start-up firms are most likely to disrupt an industry, sometimes only a large firm can do so. So it is that Google will try to disrupt AT&T and Verizon by launching mobile service based on its becoming a mobile virtual network operator, with a new twist.

In addition to using third party Wi-Fi, Google apparently has signed up both Sprint and T-Mobile US as underlying access providers because Google wants devices used by its customers to switch between Sprint and T-Mobile US and Wi-Fi based on which network has the best signal “right now.”

In case you missed it, this is the same concept touted by supporters of fifth generation mobile networks.

Perhaps only a firm as large and wealthy as Google could try this, something that has not been attempted before (using two different wholesale providers), and which has a chance to disrupt the market more than any MVNO to date.

You might remember that it took Apple to revolutionize the relationship between handset manufacturers and the mobile service providers. Perhaps it is Google--more than T-Mobile US or Sprint--that now will disrupt the U.S. mobile market.

Google is Vertically Integrating the Internet Ecosystem

Google now has announced launches of Google Fiber in Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Raleigh-Durham, N.C. and Nashville, Tenn. Those launches come as Google also is said to be preparing to enter the U.S. mobile service provider business and has invested $1 billion in SpaceX, Elon Musk’s satellite firm.

SpaceX, in turn, has announced plans to build a new constellation of low earth orbit satellites to provide Internet access to people in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

Separately, Virgin Group and Qualcomm also are investors in the WorldVu “OneWeb Ltd.” service, which hopes to launch a constellation of 648 satellites to provide Internet access to users in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

Investor Richard Branson thinks the total number of satellites launched could eventually be higher than 648. Branson also says voice service will be part of the core service.

Those efforts of course follow on Google’s Project Loon effort to test use of balloons to provide Internet access, as well as earlier Google investments in Clearwire, municipal Wi-Fi, as well as pledges to invest in spectrum in past mobile spectrum auctions.

Then there are the Android mobile operating system initiatives, Nexus tablets and phones.

So the shocking new development is that it might be Google that is slowly assembling the sort of vertically-integrated service that telcos once provided. Shocking, isn’t it?

Cablevision to Launch All-Wi-Fi "Mobile" Service

Cablevision Systems Corporation will launch Freewheel,  a new low-cost, all-Wi-Fi phone service in the first quarter of 2015, and possibly as early as February. In other words, unlike some other services that rely on Wi-Fi, but default to mobile networks, Freewheel will operate exclusively using Wi-Fi.

In essence, Freewheel is launching using a pattern described by management professor Clayton Christensen, where disruptors enter a market “on the low end,” with offerings that offer clear value for some customers, but do not have all the features, or necessary the performance, of the market-leading offers.

The expectation is that, over time, as the upstart service gains traction, it starts to upgrade capabilities, until, in the end, the feature set and presumed value are equivalent to the market leaders.

Freewheel is the first all-Wi-Fi service to be introduced by a U.S. cable provider and will be offered with the Motorola Moto G smartphone, selling for $99.95.

Freewheel customers also will have automatic access to the Optimum Wi-Fi network of 1.1 million hotspots. The no-contract service will work anywhere in the world where Wi-Fi is accessible.

The service will cost $29.95 per month or $9.95 per month for Cablevision’s Optimum Online customers.

Freewheel primarily will be heavily marketed in areas where Cablevision offers triple play services.

In part, Cablevision is counting on a shift in mobile use cases, and a critical mass of Wi-Fi environment users, to drive demand for Freewheel.

Where ubiquity has been a requirement for voice and text messaging, Freewheel will try to build on some specific customer segments, including users that mainly want to use their mobiles at home, at work or on campus. In that case, the user can live without ubiquitous mobile coverage.

A somewhat related customer target are people who live in areas that have poor mobile signal coverage or are looking for an affordable service for children.

Cost-conscious customers worried about data plan spending, or do not like contracts, are other targets.

Cablevision has considered such untethered or mobile service in the past, exploring a GHz to 1.9 GHz range in the early to mid-1990s. The idea was to launch a service that cost less than mobile service and would not be usable at automobile speeds, but would work fine for consumers who were stationary or walking on the sidewalk.

Cablevision never ultimately launched such a service. The PCS spectrum allowed Sprint and what became T-Mobile USA to attack the mobile market directly, with lower prices, so a separate market for a new type of lower cost, lower functionality service never developed.

But Cablevision thinks it is time to try again. in a different time, with a different end user value proposition. Compared to 1993, untethered mobile Internet access is vastly more important, fully mobile voice and texting arguably a bit less important.

As often is the case, ideas sometimes are “too early.” That was the case for “application service providers,” in many ways the precursors of today’s cloud-based apps and business models.

That also might be said to have been true for the vision of PCS Cablevision originally had developed.

The point is that we now will get a test of whether Wi-Fi actually can provide an alternative to mobile service, a question that has been debated, off and on, at some level, for decades.