Best Buy Expands Recyling Programs

Best Buy Co. has launched a test of its newest electronics recycling program to in 117 U.S. stores, in addition to the existing programs offered by Best Buy stores, which have focused on mobile phones, ink cartridges, batteries and other smaller mobile devices.

Starting June 1, 117 stores in the Baltimore, San Francisco, and Minnesota markets are inviting customers to bring in no more than two units per day, per household, for recycling at no charge.

Customers can bring items such as televisions and monitors up to 32”, computers, phones, cameras, and other electronics devices and peripherals in for recycling.

The following items cannot be accepted through this program:

• Televisions or monitor screens greater than 32”
• Console televisions
• Air conditioners
• Microwaves
• Appliances (customers are invited instead to use Best Buy’s appliance haul-away and pick-up programs)

Meanwhile, Best Buy continues to offer these electronics and appliance recycling options, available in every U.S. store:

• Recycling kiosks: at the front of every store, ink cartridges, rechargeable batteries, cell phones, CDs, DVDs, and PDA/smart phones can be dropped off for free recycling
• Appliance and television haul-away: Best Buy will remove an old or obsolete appliance or television free of charge from a consumers' home when a new product is purchased and delivered by Best Buy Home Delivery or Geek Squad Home Theater Installation Service.
• Appliance and television pick-up: For $100, Best Buy will arrange a home visit to remove up to two (2) appliance units and/or televisions for recycling, with $20 for each additional unit.
• Tech Trade-In: Visit www.bestbuytradein.com to trade in select gently used electronics for a Best Buy gift card.

BT to Cut Carbon Footprint 80% by 2020

British Telecom plans to reduce its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. BT earlier had said it would invest close to half a billion dollars in wind farms that could supply close to 25 percent of the company’s power needs by 2016.

Wireline, Wireless, Broadand All Up in France

There's some interesting data emerging about wireless substitution. To wit, wireline subscriptions in some markets do not appear to be declining as wireless grows.

To be sure, share is shifting to new competitors. But that's a different question than abandonment of wireline accounts in favor of wireless-only service.

France added around 675,000 new broadband users in the first three months of this year to boost the country’s high speed internet user base from 15.551 million to 16.225 million, reports the country’s regulator Arcep.

On an annualised basis, the French residential and business broadband market climbed 18.6 percent from 13.676 million at the end of March 2007, the report said. ADSL continues to be the overwhelmingly popular access technology, accounting for 15.475 million access lines, with the remainder made up by cable, FTTx or satellite services.

Arcep also reported a strong rise in wholesale access lines in the period under review, up 338,000 lines to 7.825 million. France had also unbundled 5.521 million local loops by the start of April 2008, with some 4.012 million subscribers taking fully unbundled services.

In other findings, mobile subscriptions also continue to grow, while fixed lines also were up. So much for wireless substitution.

50% Home Network Penetration

More than half of broadband users in the United States today have some form of home network, according to ABI Research. In 2006 one third of broadband subscribers had such networks.

Fifteen percent of home network owners today are streaming music over the network and another one in ten is streaming video, ABI notes.

Verizon Wireless Data Revenue Up 65% in 2007

Verizon Wireless data revenue is exploding, says Verizon Chief Financial Officer Doreen Toben said Thursday.

Verizon wireless data revenues grew 65 percent in 2007, representing almost one-quarter of service revenues for Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon and Vodafone.

On an annualized basis, first quarter data revenue would reach almost $10 billion, she said, putting Verizon “only at the beginning of explosive growth.”

Mobile Ad Revenue Bigger than Web Ad Revenue?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says mobile advertising would make more money than advertising on the traditional Web in a few years.

That could be a huge number, though some might question whether the numbers are achievable. Analysts at Piper Jafray, for example, peg U.S. Internet advertising at about $30 billion in 2008.

What isn't clear is whether mobile advertising represents another $30 billion or will augment the growth of PC-based Internet advertising.

Schmidt seems to be the former, not the latter.

Schmidt pointed to reports of staggering mobile internet usage by iPhone users as an indication of the platform's viability and noted that iPhone makes the mobile internet lucrative by equipping users with a good mobile Web browser.

Skyfire Labs in late May raised $13 million in series A venture capital to create a new mobile-optimized browser, which is some indication of thinking that mobile apps are promising. And since advertising is based on monetizing attention, the investment suggests some thinking that a sizable revenue model is available.

The Customer Service Hall of Shame

AOL has the worse ranking among companies with "poor customer service," according to MSN Money's second annual Customer Service Hall of Shame, a ranking of companies with the worst customer service, based on a nationwide survey commissioned by MSN Money and conducted by Zogby International.

Comcast was said to have poor customer service by 42 percent of respondents. Sprint, Qwest, Time Warner CAble and Cox Communications also are on the list of "10 worst" performers.
. .
About 47 percent of people who had an opinion of AOL's customer service said it was "poor." MSN Money writer Karen Aho notes that communications companies and banks that provide complex and at times highly technical products are on the list precisely because those products are so complex.

Still, one has to note that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are not on the list. Without excusing poor performance, consumer customer service is a tough job, hard to do well. As someone who once worked for a system integrator, I can attest that questions sometimes came in that I wasn't sure who was responsible for handling.

I don't think I'd claim we ever did a great job of it. It's tough, dogged work.

In fact, it can be unpleasant work. My wife occasionally gets calls from angry consumers who have a right to be angry, and all she can do is direct them to a department that probably was responsible for the unresponsive behavior in the first place. She knows the service "sucks." But large organizations that really don't care tend not to fix those sorts of problems.

In fairness, all big companies struggle with customer service, for good reasons. It's hard to do well, especially when the average size of any single account isn't large enough to devote as much support as one probably should provide.

Still, one notes that some names did not appear on the list. As tough as it is, customer service is better at some companies than at others. As a personal aside, I'm not sure I can agree with poll respondents who say Qwest customer service is poor. That hasn't been my personal experience at all.

In fairness, though, my contact with Qwest is as a business customer, and business customers get better service.

For the survey, conducted online in March, Zogby asked more than 7,000 people across the country to rate their customer experiences with 140 leading companies in 14 industries, including airlines, hotels, insurance companies and big-box stores such as Wal-Mart. Respondents could answer "excellent," "good," "fair," "poor," "not familiar" or "not sure."

The companies in the Hall of Shame were ranked by the percentage of people familiar with a company who answered "poor."

Economy Changes Shopping Behavior

Vertis Communications Vertis Communications says U.S. adult consumers might be changing their physical world and online shopping habits in response to economic conditions.

One might expect further adjustments as higher gas prices start to change behavior as well.

Some 64 percent of consumers say they are shopping closer to home. About 59 percent are combining trips while 51 percent say they are cutting back on luxury items.

About 40 percent say they are making fewer purchases of $100 or more.

About 36 percent buy larger quantities of staples when they shop.

About a quarter are doing more research before buying and 13 percent say they are buying more online, perhaps to save money, perhaps to save gas.

in the US in January and found that 13% of respondents actually planned to buy more goods online as a result of current economic conditions.

Social Media, Text, Email Advertising Up Next 3 Years

More than three-quarters of marketers surveyed by Eloqua say they will increase their social media spending during the next three years. A full 74 percent said they plan to increase their direct email spending while about two thirds will spend more on mobile texting and SMS.

Respondents were bullish on online ad spending overall, with nine out of 10 saying they would continue to increase their direct online ad budgets.

The spending increases are likely to come at the expense of print ads, since 55 percent of respondents say they will probably decrease print ad spending in the next three years.

Bresnan Wins Huge Contract: Proves Thesis

Many executives in the competitive local exchange carrier industry do not believe cable operators will achieve much success in the commercial markets, aside from the very-small business that requires as many as eight voice lines and not much more.

Those executives include some of the most-successful, best-respected CLEC operators in the business. But they still might be wrong.

The State of Montana Information Technology Services Division and the Montana University system has selected Bresnan Communications as a provider of statewide data transport services for Montana’s state agencies, local governments, universities and schools.

We are talking about a network with 568 locations, serving 23 different government agencies, 14 college campuses, 40 local government entities and courthouses.

I've maintained for some time that cable operators would prove in their commercial organization in the very-small business space before beginning to move up the value chain. Bresnan's win proves they can do it.

Tell Telecom Regulators How to Make the Internet Better

Sound off. Let government regulators know “How can the Internet make the world a better place?” Post your comments at www.youtube.com/futureinternet.

YouTube users can share their opinion with the leaders and opinion shapers attending the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development "future of the Internet" meeting in Seoul, Korea on 17-18 June 2008.

The best videos uploaded to www.youtube.com/futureinternet will be shown to ministers and VIPs at the event. They will be invited to react as well and their answers will be uploaded on YouTube during the meeting.

In Seoul, all participants, including government ministers from more than 40 countries and hundreds of global leaders from international government organisations, business, the Internet's technical community and civil society, will be encouraged to submit their own answers at a dedicated YouTube booth on site.

Global Bandwidth Consumption Grows 63% in 2007

International bandwidth grew 63 percent in 2007, which just about matches the 50 percent annual growth in bandwidth use reported by SureWest Communications, an independent telco, as well as other broadband access providers.

For buyers of global bandwidth, it appears aggregate prices were "stable," as industry watchers note, meaning a decline of 10 percent or in some cases 20 percent on capacity prices. Global bandwidth, especially on well-supplied routes, tends to decline over time as buyers consume more optical products that offer lower price-per-megabit ratios.

However, prices are opaque, and pace of price changes varies dramatically—by route, by service provider, and by bandwidth product, TeleGeography notes. There can be quite a lot of price variation even on a single route, and for a single product, as these prices for London to Paris indicate.

Mobile Social Networking Forecast

In-Stat forecasts over 229.5 million mobile subscribers globally could be using mobile social networking services by 2012. Blogging, photo and video sharing, location-based socialization services, games, SMS, and IM will eventually be combined to afford the mobile user the entire social networking experience from a handset application, In-Stat says.

Carriers will benefit from wider use of data plans, to be sure. But the more important insight probably is that the handset becomes the focus of attachment. The mobile handset will simply become an extension of the user in most aspects of life, In-Stat argues. If so, carrier brands will be less important than the handset brands.

"The critical issue most mobile social networking site and application developers struggle with is how to make money with their services," says Jill Meyers, In-Stat analyst. "There are three primary methods of revenue generation for mobile social networking applications- advertising, subscription services, and premium upgrades."

Little of that potential revenue is available directly to network service providers, though. And it remains unclear whether social networking actually is the foundation for a revenue stream or simply a really important feature.

Digital Savvy Dangers

Research from Scarborough Research shows that early adopters are different from other consumers. "Digital savvy" consumers use more technology and have more money, than the typical mass market consumer.

Cable operators never make the mistake of getting hung up worrying about early adopters. Everything they do is tuned for the average consumer, the sort of "other side of the chasm" customer technologists have to learn to deal with to achieve real mass market success.

It is important to note what sorts of experiences are getting traction, of course. It's just a different matter to tailor those experiences for the great mass of consumers who will not put up with much inconvenience when using new applications and services.

Lots of entrepreneurs fail when they don't clearly understand the differences between the bleeding edge early adopters and the real mass market.

Email Still Tops for Adult Consumers

Two-thirds of adult respondents said they preferred e-mail for communicating with businesses, say researchers at Ipsos.

Just as many—and this might be the important part—say they expected to continue preferring email five years from now.

The issue is how other younger age cohorts will adapt to the email-centric culture prevalent in business. One suggests they'll adapt quickly, even as they push for use of additional tools.