Unlimited Mobile Plans Are Revenue Accretive

Despite fears of a new and devastating price war caused by unlimited calling plans, the opposite seems to be occurring.

Quite to the contrary, the new plans seem to be encouraging users to trade up, and add more-capacious data plans as well, at least at Verizon Wireless.

"In the first quarter our unlimited plan accounted for 13 percent of our single line retail post-paid adds, says Denny Strigl, Verizon Communications COO. "That compares to about four percent choosing the $99 or above tiers before the plan was launched." Lots more users seem to be trading up to the more-expensive plans, in other words.

"We’re seeing good growth in high tier voice plans," says Strighl. There are churn benefits, which was the impetus for the plan. What might have been unforeseen is the increase in usage of data services and aggregate growth of customers moving up to the $90 plan from lower-revenue plans.

"Additionally, a high percentage of the new customers who choose an unlimited plan also choose our select or premium data packages," says Strigl.

"In March, which was the first full month after the launch, our average daily disconnects declined six percent from previous months and that is at the voice access tier $79 and above," says Strigl.

It appears that there are more users willing to trade up than there are heavy users finding they can save money by trading down, in other words.

$6.6 Billion U.S. Mobile Media Revenues by 2012

U.S. mobile media and entertainment revenue will grow to $6.6 billion in 2012 from $3.1 billion in 2007, according to Analysys Research.

Analysys said that most of the growth will not happen until after 2010, when the technical and market environment for mobile media and entertainment is expected to improve.

Up to this point, mobile TV, music and other content has been patchy in coverage, limited in content and expensive.

That is less true globally, Analysys says. Total spending on mobile media services by consumers and advertisers worldwide will grow to more than $102 billion in 2012 from about $47 billion in 2007.

"Relative growth in consumer spending on mobile media applications will be surpassed by advertisers, as they look to exploit the maturing cellular content channel as a means to deliver their marketing and advertising messages to key target segments," said David Kerr, vice president at Strategy Analytics.

The New Conventional IT Wisdom

It is perhaps a commentary on how much things have changed that the U.K.-based research group Butler Group can put out a new research report that confirms what the consensus is.

Butler Group says organizations are moving from traditional hierarchies based on command and control to looser structures featuring collaboration and team work, with a fundamental shift from one-to-one to many-to-many communication.

Communications service providers typically worry more about access line shrinkage, margins on minutes of use and adoption of new services, than about changes in user communication modes. But Butler Group's point about many-to-many communication is key.

It implies a growing shift to "broadcast" modes of communication such as blogs, Twitter-style streaming and social networking mechanisms.

Organizations also are beginning to expand past their traditional boundaries found in the past, which is driving the need for IP infrastructure.

There is a requirement for greater location independence, with remote working becoming more popular and many employees no longer remaining in one place for any great length of time, the research group says.

"It is becoming apparent that the existing separate silo-ed infrastructures are no longer the answer," Butler Group says.

"A services-based approach is best suited to this environment," Butler Group says.

That means Web services, says Mark Blowers, Butler Group director.

"Moving away from proprietary solutions for voice and data to a horizontal communications architecture will enable the communications environment to be broken down into separate layers, making use of industry standards to integrate the hardware, common services, and administration elements," he says.

All of that shows what the new consensus is. Web services, software as a service, open networks, remote and cross-boundary communications. Most significant of all, from a service provider perspective, is the move to "many-to-many" communications. That could be as significant as the shift from wired to wireless communications.

3G BlackBerry 9000 Delay

Research In Motion's 9000 series BlackBerry may be delayed by two months due to battery life, voice quality and other issues, RBC Capital Markets says.

The new device was expected to be announced in May with a June launch for AT&T in the U.S. and Vodafone in Europe, but might now be delayed to July and August, RBC analyst Mike Abramsky says.

Some suggest the "Meteor" will use the new BlackBerry 4.5 operating system, a 624MHz processor, 480x320 screen, GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA, a 3G mobile communications protocol that is reportedly the source of the battery problems.

The new BlackBerry may also have rounded edges, giving it a sleeker look. Reports suggest that it will not have a touch screen like Apple's iPhone.

The BlackBerry and iPhone are in what some observers call a "two horse smart phone race," and 3G connections are the top new feature iPhone users want, according to ChangeWave.

AT&T Begins Starbucks Wi-Fi Rollout

AT&T has begun its rollout of Wi-Fi service at company-operated Starbucks stores, kicking off a nationwide effort that will continue through 2008.

As of May 1, qualifying AT&T high speed Internet and Wi-Fi customers will have complimentary Wi-Fi access at more than 7,000 Starbucks locations nationwide.

Free AT&T Wi-Fi service is currently offered with AT&T's three higher-speed residential broadband packages, all small business broadband packages and with all AT&T U-verse offerings with high speed Internet service.

For other customers, AT&T Wi-Fi service will reach company-operated Starbucks locations on a market-by-market basis throughout the year. The experience will include a mix of free and paid connection options for both frequent and occasional Wi-Fi users and qualifying Starbucks customers.

Mobile Skype in Beta

Skype has released a beta version of Skype for mobile phones. The “thin“ client works on about 50 of the most popular Java-enabled mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, Skype says.

The beta version is available worldwide with a feature set that includes chat, group chat, presence, and inbound calls from Skype users using SkypeIn.

Additional features, which include Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls from the mobile handsets, are initially supported in seven markets: Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

U.S. Smart Phone Market: iPhone and BlackBerry

ChangeWave says its polls show a rapidly evolving two-horse race between the Apple iPhone and Research in Motion BlackBerry, with second tier players like Palm (PALM) and a host of others being shoved to the sidelines.

BlackBerry owners like most the BlackBerry's exceptional access to email. What they don't like is its Internet browsing experience.

As you might guess, iPhone users value different features. By far the most lauded feature of the iPhone among owners is its seamless integration of a Phone, iPod and Internet browser.

The second most popular feature is the iPhone's touch screen interface, followed by its ease of use.

There is no doubt about what iPhone owners hate most: the speed of the AT&T EDGE network. Nor do they like being restricted to using just one carrier.

Users also expressed unhappiness with the iPhone's lack of copy-and-paste functionality.

Each device has "a super-loyal cadre of users that fervently support their phone brand, and each has extraordinary room to grow," Compete says.

BlackBerry continues to show "enormous strength" among ChangeWave business users.

"But the bottom line in this horse race is Apple and Research In Motion are both giant winners," says ChangeWave. "The rest of the smart phone manufacturers lose."

VCs Think TV is Ripe for Disruption

Venture capitalists seem to agree that television is a business ripe for disruption. Silicon Alley bloger Michael Learmonth says 68 startups landed $460.5 million in funding in 2007, up from $266.9 million in 2006. Venture capitalists also invested another $217.3 million in the first quarter of 2008, he says.

$6 Billion Enterprise VoIP Market by 2012

Business-class VoIP service revenues could reach $6 Billion by year end 2012n say researchers at Pike & Fischer.

The firm predicts business-class VoIP services in the United States will grow at a 31 percent compound annual growth rate over the next four years. In a new study, we've concluded that revenue for

One Bucket for Voice and Broadband

One of the reasons unified communications, unified messaging, unified services, fixed mobile convergence, mashups and other similar concepts are so confusing is partly because there are lots of different ways they can be implemented, and because they highlight different ways software usage and communications are changing.

In some future incarnation, users who pay money for services will be able to invoke various identities and roles when using those services and features, with some sort of analogy to "multiple service, single log in" rather than "single service, single sign-on."

In other words, where today users might have to log in serially to multiple services they want to use, in the future they might be able to log in once, but use different features, devices and network services depending on their "roles" and "identities," while the network itself figures out all the details of authentication and security.

In the nearer term, it might be more common to find that customers buy a service, such as "voice and messaging" or "broadband access," and then be able to use any number of access networks or devices as part of the one service. Think of a single bucket of usage that can be used for "calling," "messaging" or Web surfing, for example.

Instead of buying separate 3G wireless service, digital subscriber line and then Wi-Fi hotspot service, a user might be able to buy "broadband" and use all the various modalities. The same sort of concept might hold for "calling," where mobile, fixed or PC-mediated, TV-mediated, game console or some other format is used.

AT&T is pushing that way, for example. Having a large internal customer base, or "community" if you like, it can leverage assets and relationships in a fairly broad way. All AT&T voice customers, for example, are one huge calling community.

In the meantime, lots of changes on lots of fronts will keep happening, pushing almost inexorably toward a future where features are made available not on a location or device or number level, but at a authenticated user level. Beyond that lies the ability to invoke features based on an identity or role.

Java: 100 Percent Open Source

Sun Microsystems says Java will be made 100 percent open source. Sun began moving that direction in 2006 and now will hope the change prompts much more development on the Linux platform.

The move does not finally the answer the question of how some companies can make money "selling" things other people offer "for free." Still, the move will provide more examples of how "for fee" businesses and services are built on "free" or "open" platforms.

One of the obvious developments so far is that "open" is one business model, "free" another. Platforms can be "open" to innovation without using a "free to end user" business model. On the other hand, "free" platforms can sometimes create huge ecosystems of "for fee" devices, services and software that leverage a widely-used "free" platform.

Mobiles: Slowdown Possible

Mobile shipments are shaping up to be softer in the second quarter, says ABI Research Vice President Jake Saunders. "Year on year, the first quarter of 2008 was up 13.7 percent, but the second quarter of 2008 is likely to be softer than in previous years."

Shipment volumes in the developed markets have softened slightly due to the credit crisis, but emerging markets such as Asia-Pacific, South America, and the Middle East/Africa are delivering growth rate percentages in the mid-20sn he says.

Nokia increased its share to 39.9 percent while Samsung and LG were also net winners with 16 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively, he adds.

Motorola continued to lose market share (falling 2.6 percent) to 9.5 percent, while Sony Ericsson lost market share (down to 7.7 percent).

But a new class of mobile device: MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices). MIDs made their debut last year, and some might consider them contenders of a new sort.

ABI Research expects 2008 to top out at 1.28 billion devices shipped – a 12 percent increase year over year. But the firm also warns there could be exposure to the downside.

Spam Not an Issue?

Ferris Research wonders why there isn't more interest in spam problems on the part of the media. One reason might be that ISPs, application providers and security suites are doing a pretty good job these days.

One observation: mission creep is an issue lots of organizations face. Attention gets paid on new problems that sooner or later get solved. Then organizations or companies have to find some new problem to solve or they are out of business.

Maybe spam is that sort of problem.

Teens: 60% Have Mobiles, 70% Have PCs

Six in ten teens (59 percent) now have a desktop or laptop computer and 71 percent own mobile phones, up from 45 percent in 2004 and 63 percentin 2006, says the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Overall, more than four in ten teens (45 percent) personally have both a computer and a cell phone with cell phone (81 percent) and computer (65 percent) ownership being
particularly high among older teens.

iPhone Boosts Wireless Data Revenue

The iPhone clearly is boosting AT&T Wireless data revenues, which increased 57 percent increase year-over-year in its most-recent quarter.

Wireless revenue for the first quarter of 2008 was $11.8 billion, with wireless data revenue contributing $2.3 billion, or 22 percent, of that total, compared with 16 percent in the same period last year.

Internet access, email, and messaging overall are the drivers. And there's no doubt smart phones are key. Smart phone users generate twice the data revenue of typical phone users.

iPhone average revenue per user is more than $90, AT&T executives say.