EU Issues Report on Mobile Phone Cancer Risk

The European Commission is the latest group to issue a report on non-ionizing radiation, any type of electromagnetic radiation including near ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, microwave, radio waves, and low frequency RF (longwave) that does not cause heating.

The EU report basically argues there is a "significant risk of brain tumors from cellphone use." The issue has been studied for decades, and there might be thousands of studies that investigate one form or another of non-ionizing radiation, with results that might fairly be called inconclusive.

Still, the EU study says there is enough uncertainty to warrant keeping "certain establishments free of wireless device radiation, including schools, child day care centers, retirement homes and health care institutions."

Dr. George Carlo, leader of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association’s $25M research project, for example, is said by the EU report to have found in 1999 "a statistically significant doubling of brain cancer risk" from mobile use. But three of the five subsequent brain tumor studies published between 2000 and 2002 found “non-significant” elevated risks.

But those studies also are said to show an elevated risk as years of mobile phone usage lengthen.

"Studies led by Professor Lennart Hardell in Sweden found significantly increased risk of brain tumors from 10 or more years of cellphone or cordless phone use," the report suggests. "For every 100 hours of cellphone use, the risk of brain cancer increases by five percent," the report suggests.

"For every year of cellphone use, the risk of brain cancer increases by eight percent," while "after 10 or more years of digital cellphone use, there was a 280 percent increased risk of brain cancer."

"For digital cellphone users who were teenagers or younger when they first starting using a cellphone, there was a 420 percent increased risk of brain cancer," the report says.

The study suggests that dangers are greatest for children.

The study also suggests, as you might expect, more studies of greater rigor. That is not a bad idea. Up to this point, the studies have been contradictory, and therefore inconclusive. But it would not be fair to say no studies have suggested any danger: some have.

Right now, some of us would say that mobile technology is a highly useful technology that might carry some risk, as do automobiles, airplanes or even other household tools. As with any tool, use them wisely.

SES: Back to the Future for Satellites

U.S. and European broadband stimulus plans are dampening prospects for delivering broadband Internet access using satellite networks, SES, the largest satellite operator, says. On the other hand, growing demand for satellite-delivered high-definition television likely will grow.

In many ways that is a "back to the future" move, as satellite point-to-multipoint networks always have been optimal for delivery of linear TV signals. Specifically, SES sees a growing role for use of satellite as the delivery mechanism for multi-channel TV by telcos in situations where fixed broadband networks do not have the capacity to delivery TV signals.

That might represent a market including 40 percent to 50 percent of locations.

“I personally believe the rollout of terrestrial broadband will be such that you can’t demonstrate the viability of satellite in the long term,” Romain Bausch, SES CEO, told the Financial Times.

SES provides two-way satellite broadband to 45,000 customers in Europe but would not invest in new capacity for purposes of serving Internet access demand, Bausch says. Support for mobile voice and video is a different matter, though.

SES plans to add eight satellites to its 40-strong fleet within three years, boosting capacity 19 per cent. About 170 of the 200 new transponders will cover emerging markets where SES supplies the “backbone” to mobile networks in remote areas.

High-definition television, which requires twice the satellite capacity of standard definition channels, continued to power SES’s video revenues.

BSkyB, an SES customer, has announced plans to pioneer 3D television in the UK in 2010, which will require a third more satellite capacity than current HD programming.Ultra-HD, being tested in Japan, could consume four times as much capacity, Bausch also notes.

Gmail User Engagement Seems Higher: Why?

Behavioral differences between users of similar products always are profoundly important, either because one provider has uncovered a better end user interface, better features, some unmet user need or because end user segments are revealed by their choices.

According to a new study by ChimpMail, which analyzed about 184 million email messages , when it comes to open rates, click rates, bounces and abuse complaints, there are distinct differences in recipients' engagement with email between major webmail services.

Open rates, for example, were highest among Gmail users (31 percent) and lowest among AOL users (20 percent). Gmail also ranked highest for click rate with 7.4 percent compared to Yahoo's lowest of 4.2 percent.

Messages sent to Gmail accounts also had the lowest hard bounce rate, though other data indicates Gmail’s spam protection may be so stringent that messages disappear without producing a bounce. A 2009 Return Path study, for example, found a 23 percent nondelivery rate for marketing messages sent to Gmail.

According to comScore, Gmail is the third-most-popular e-mail property among U.S. Internet users, though it posted the highest growth rate between July 2008 and July 2009. Unique visitors to the service rose 46 percent to nearly 37 million.

ChimpMail executives suspect the data show there is some demographic difference between Gmail and other Web-based email users that accounts for the higher engagement rates.

Some also think better junk mail filtering by Gmail accounts for the difference in engagement. Perhaps fewer messages, better tailored to actual end users, are being delivered to Gmail users. It is possible that this better matching of interests and messages is having an impact.

What Makes a Business "Social"?

For the past couple of years, businesses have been trying to figure out what it means to be "social," to create "communities" of users, prospects and customers.

The concept is hard to understand, in some ways. Every business satisfies some understood end user want or need, selling products or services that are an answer for those needs or wants. So social networking is seen as a better way to connect with people, and buildconnections between people, in an environment that is conducive to the company’s success.

Some of us call this a shift from "push" marketing to "pull" marketing, from "promoting products" to "inviting people to be part of a conversation about shared interests."

Jahin Mahindra points to Chick-Fil-A as an example. The firm knew it would have a hard time competing against other giants such as Kentucky Fried Chicken. So instead of "selling chicken," Chick-Fil-A created a gathering spot for mothers with children.

Almost all Chick-Fil-A buildings are constructed with indoor play areas for children. Wi-Fi has been added to many locations to ensure the parents can flip open the laptop at the table while junior plays in the jungle gym. Employees routinely pass through and refill drinks or even clear tables as if users were dining in a more formal establishment.

What this has done, in many Chick-Fil-A locations, is create a place for the desperate housewives to gather and nosh on weekday afternoons, Mahindra says.

"It’s not about the food; It’s about the social environment created that is conducive to buying the food," says Mahindra.

"If you have a location, make visiting your location a social event," he says. "Why do you think many bookstores now have coffee shops built in?"

"If you’re a meeting place as well as a place to buy things, people will frequent your location for reasons other than buying stuff," he says.

That's admittedly a tougher thing to do in a business-to-business setting than in a business-to-consumer environment, but the principles are the same.

Verizon Exec Says "We Don't Want to Upgrade" Charges are "Absurd"

Some policy advocates are taking shots at Verizon Communications for taking the position that a workable minimum definition of "broadband," for purposes of setting national broadband policy, is 768 kbps downstream and 200 kbps upstream.

"There seems to be some confusion around Verizon’s filing suggesting that the FCC keep a baseline definition for broadband as

768 kbps down and 200 kbps up," says David Young, Verizon VP. "The implication here is that we want to keep the speed set low so we won’t have to upgrade our networks."

"This is clearly absurd," he says. Indeed, in its filing Verizon itself suggests a goal of 50 Mbps for fixed broadband and 5 Mbps for mobile broadband.

But Verizon suggests that for reporting, tracking and measurement purposes, the FCC should maintain the current definition used in

the FCC broadband data reporting program (Form 477) for a basline, while continuing to track multiple higher “speed tiers” to get

a full view of what’s happening in the broadband marketplace.

This threshold definition also has the benefit of being the same one used by NTIA and RUS for the broadband stimulus program, Young argues.

There are lots of good reasons for being consistent about national data collection, the most obivious being that it is impossible to track progress over time if we keep changing the definitions. Many important changes that happen in national communications take 10 years or more, and it can make a huge difference if, along the way, the definitions of what we are tracking have changed frequently.

The other reason is that the definitions will cover networks of very type physical properties. Satellite, fixed wireless wireless, mobile and fixed networks all have different cost and capability profiles.

Beyond that, if what we are after is the fastest possible broadband availability, from the widest array of suppliers, with the most-robust growth in speeds and quality of service, at the lowest cost to consumers, the different speeds and investment profiles have to be harmonized.

Every communications engineer realizes there is a trade-off between capability and cost whenever a network is designed. Every engineer knows a network can be optimized--both in terms of performance and deployment cost--if a single application is supported. But multi-purpose networks inherently are tougher to design because there are more trade-offs.

Broadband networks generally are more expensive than narrowband networks, and networks featuring higher bandwidth generally cost more than networks of lower bandwidth.

If definitions are too stringent in the near term, it is possible some potential users, especially users in thinly-settled areas, will find that few, if any, providers can provide them service at any price those consumers would be willing to pay.

Finally, it would strike many as odd to accuse Verizon, which has been the most-aggressive tier one U.S. provider, of not being willing to invest heavily in broadband. Its FiOS fiber-to-home network is the most aggressive program in North America, and Verizon already is ready to start building a 4G wireless network even as it upgrades its 3G wireless network.

Floors are different from ceilings, and floors for some networks are ceilings for others. Customers, for example, cannot buy satellite broadband operating at more than 5 Mbps downstream, for any amount of money. And satellite is, by anybody's estimation, the absolute most affordable way to provide broadband to isolated locations. Fixed and mobile broadband are somewhat more expensive, but can support higher bandwidth.

In an isolated area, optical fiber or even digital subscriber line or cable modem service offers the most bandwidth, but at the highest cost. Cost and bandwidth, in other words, represent a standard engineering trade-off. The highest bandwidth also comes at the highest cost.

To the extent that retail prices are to be kept relatively low, the network investment must be matched to the anticipated revenue. It might, in some cases, be necessary to trade off some capability to keep costs low.

It would be a mistake to confuse that problem, and the other need to maintain comparable statistics to measure progress, with provider unwillingness to keep pace with growing market demands for broadband speed.

Providers that fail to keep pace will lose customer share. They know that. But unreasonable near-term definitions will not help potential customers get service, or even help existing customers get faster speeds, more quickly.

http://policyblog.verizon.com/BlogPost/661/title.aspx

European Mobile Broadband Penetration to Double by 2014

European mobile broadband penetration will double from 17 percent in 2009 to 39 percent in 2014, Forrester Research now projects.

Click on image for larger view.

This forecast of course looks quite linear, but that's a hazard of the forecasting business. It isn't possible to model unexpected effects.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish Complaining About Communications?

Lots of people enjoy complaining about how bad their mobile service is, how expensive and slow their broadband is or how useless their landline voice service is. It isn't that the complaints have no foundation.

And even if unfounded, consumers are under no obligation to be "happy" about products they believe do not offer proper value-price-quality relationships.

Oddly enough, people are less happy when change is occurring. Students of revolution often have made that observation: that unhappiness is highest when there is hope for change, compared to situations where there is no hope of change.

The simple way of maintaining perspective is to ask oneself how much one was paying for such services--compared to the value one was getting--for any services as they existed in 1980s or in 1995. Then evaluate what one now gets, compared to the price, compared to when one first began using any new service (mobility or broadband or the Web).

The less conducted exercise is to compare how much complaining gets directed at all communication services as a whole, compared to what one spends for fuel on one's automobile. As it turns out, U.S. consumers spend 2.2 percent to 2.5 percent of disposable income on all communication services they use and buy.

Of late, they have been spending 2.5 percent to four percent of disposable income on fuel for autos and about 11 percent on transporation overall.

Of course, most people likely feel there is only so much they can do about spending on fuel or transportation, but considering that people spend more on fuel than all of their communications, and perhaps four to five times more on transportation, one wonders if people are not being "penny wise, pound foolish."

In other words, people seem to worry lots about a smaller amount of spending, but seemingly worry less about larger amounts of spending.

Small Business Optimism Plunges in July: Government is the Reason

Small businesses create 80 percent of new jobs, virtually all observers agree. So what's happening with small business hiring? The good news: year-to-date small business hiring, as measured by changes in the average size of a U.S. small business, is up 1.7 percent in 2009. The bad news: Salaries, on the other hand, have consistently been trending in the opposite direction. Year to date, the average small business salary has dropped 5.1 percent, says SurePayroll, which handles payroll functions for U.S. small businesses.

Year to date, salaries have dropped 5.1 percent. The average small business annual paycheck in the United States now is $29,995. One year ago, in July 2008, it was $32,290. The last time the average small business paycheck dipped under $30,000 was March 2006. Since we began the Small Business Scorecard in January 2004, the lowest average small business paycheck was $28,589 in August 2005.

The other potential worrisome finding is that, although optimism is growing on the job front, small business owner optimism has plummeted lately. To the extent that optimism is an underpinning for more hiring, that is troubling.

"For July 2009, we saw a substantial decrease in business owner optimism levels," SurePayroll says.

"In response to a survey we conducted at the end of July, only 56 percent of responding small business owners indicated that they were optimistic about the small business economy," SurePayroll says.

"That represents a big drop in optimism from June 2009 when 79 percent of respondents indicated they were optimistic about the small business economy. In May 2009, 73 percent of respondents were optimistic," the firm says.

It may seem odd that optimism is dropping at the same time that there are many reports about how the economy appears to have turned the corner toward recovery.

But many respondents indicated that their pessimism is powered primarily by increased government spending and concerns about the costs of health care reform. That should be a big warning signal for government policymakers who claim to want a fast return to higher employment.

Shocking Change in Video Behavior?

Is linear video about to take an unprecedented hit? A stunning new poll suggests it is possible, even if the results are shockingly different from any others taken so far.

Nobody ever seems surprised by surveys or polls suggesting younger users consume media differently than older users.

A new survey of 1,660 ChangeWave members suggests the changes in media consumption--though not a substitution of online video for linear video--are spreading to users between the ages of 45 and 63 as well.

The Baby Boomers surveyed now spend more free time online han they do watching traditional TV. Where they use the Internet 12.9 hours a week, they use TV 11.8 hours a week.

So what about substitution of online video for linear video? The results do not suggest users are switching video viewing to online mechanisms: they simply are watching less TV.

By a five-to-one margin, respondents say they are watching less traditional television than they did a year ago.

Among this group, 62 percent say it’s because they’re not as interested in what's on TV these days, and another 26 percent say they’re spending more time surfing the Web.

The big question is whether the linear video business model will face pressure as a result, not because users are watching online, but because TV itself is not as interesting. That might be the case.

Among traditional TV viewers, 20 percent say they’re likely to downgrade or cancel their current TV service package in the next six months. That is a bombshell. No other survey I am aware of has suggested anything like this level of dissatisfaction with linear video subscriptions.

The likelihood of canceling is highest among cable and satellite subscribers, 22 percent of whom say they are likely to do so, while just seven percent of fiber-optic TV subscribers say they are likely to do so.

Respondents delivered bombshell results on another question as well. When asked which one paid subscription they’d be most willing to give up, 44 percent said their video subscriptions. In virtually all other surveys I am aware of, TV has been least likely to be dropped.

So radically do these findings differ that one suspects there is sampling bias. But if there is something changing out there among the "Boomer" demographic, we ought to know soon enough. Though I cannot imagine shifts of this magnitude, we ought to see softening of cable and satellite video subscriptions within a year or so.

This bears watching. Because the results are so divergent from all others, there is risk of sampling error: the self-selected respondents might not be typical of the wider population. But it also is possible the survey is detecting a radical shift of sentiment that has not occurred before.

The results are unprecedented, and shocking.

Small, Mid-Sized Businesses Have Embraced Online Advertising

Small and medium-sized businesses in the United States are more likely to advertise online than through traditional media, but spend less on online than traditional media.

In August 2009, 77 percent of U.S. SMBs used online for advertising, compared to 69 percent that used traditional media, according to The Kelsey Group and ConStat.

The groups say the August figures represent the first time penetration of online advertising surpassed traditional.

“We have been tracking the trend of digital/online media replacing traditional media over four waves of the Local Commerce Monitor study,” said Steve Marshall, director of research at The Kelsey Group. “The milestone of digital/online surpassing traditional media among SMBs is an indicator of the broad shift to online platforms.”

Note, however, that spending does not necessarily track penetration. Though more SMBs used digital advertising, the majority of their budgets still went to traditional channels. In August 2009, The Kelsey Group found 36.8% of SMBs’ advertising budgets went toward online. That was up more than 14 percentage points over the prior year.

Total annual ad spending among SMBs was down, from an average of $2,734 in August 2008 to $2,092 in August 2009. Spending on Websites and online profile pages, however, was up more than 26% to $769.

New Cables Mean 72% Drop in Long Haul Bandwidth to Africa

What will 12 new undersea cables to Africa mean? Broadband prices on the long-haul networks will drop as much as 72 percent over the next three years, says Pyramid Research. But demand for capacity will grow at 28 percent through 2013 as well.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

The cables will increase Africa’s total international bandwidth from about 6 Tbps to as much as 34 Tbps and will reduce the number of coastal countries without any cable access from 19 to one.

AT&T Gets Unwanted Attention Over iPhone

No mobile service provider wants the attention AT&T is getting about how unhappy iPhone users are about their ability to use their devices, and the industry as a whole does not need such attention at a time when it faces possibly major reregulation by the Federal Communications Commission that could affect industry revenues right at the point that the industry is racing to upgrade its broadband capabiltiies.

One can argue one way or the other about the state of AT&T's 3G network, but there seems little question that Apple iPhone user behavior is so strikingly different from that of other smart phone users that every carrier has to be concerned about what happens as more devices like the iPhone are sold to end users. If most of them start to behave like iPhone users, carriers are likely going to have serious bandwidth problems.

Apple iPhone users consume two to four times as much network data volume as other smart phone users, according to traffic measurement company Comscore. And it also appears that users of the 3G version use 100 percent more data than iPhone users on the 2.5G networks.

So the business problem is fairly clear. An AT&T data plan of $30 a month for just about any smart phone has dramtically different revenue implications. Most smart phone users put light loads on the network for that $30, while Apple iPhone users put heavy load on the network, for that same $30.

Some think the mere expedient of building new 4G networks will solve the problem. It will help--a lot. But even that is not a permanent solution, in and of itself, if other smart phone users start to behave as iPhone users do, and all of them start consuming more video.

Alcatel-Lucent studies show that Web browsing consumes 32 percent of data-related airtime but 69 percent of bandwidth, while email uses 30 percent of airtime but only four percent of bandwidth.

One suspects this situation cannot continue. Either there will be changes to unlimited data plans, such as higher prices, as well as other ways of better matching network load to service provider revenue. Customers won't be happy about that.

But carriers might have to resort to plans that differentiate between the load different applications--especially video--place on the network and charge accordingly. Mobile networks simply do not have the ability to supply the same amount of bandwidth that wired networks do.

As more users switch to smart phones, and start to consume video and Web applications more intensively, push will come to shove. Some observers think many users will start to use their smart phones more than their wireline-tethered PCs for Web application access. Something has to give here.

And one way things could change is if significant shifts of market share were to occur, spreading the iPhone demand over more networks than AT&T's. All the carriers will keep investing in their networks, and all will be under competitive pressure to keep access costs as low as possible. Despite all that, demand might outstrip supply. So change is inevitable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/technology/companies/03att.html?_r=1&hp

Qwest Upgrades to 100 Gbps, But Worries About Future Price Impact

Qwest Communications is enhancing its nationwide network to deliver speeds of up to 100 Gigabits per second to its customer edge sites. This build-out has begun on Qwest’s network and is planned through 2010, though no further details are publicly available at the moment. But potential customers can expect that 100 Gbps local access to the backbone will be available in markets where Qwest already offers Ethernet-based "iQ Networking" and "QWave" data networking services.

But Pieter Poll, Qwest CTO, says he is concerned that, after a few years, optical component limitations could impair its ability to keep its cost per bit in line with customer expectations. The basic issue is that customers consume 40 percent more bandwidth every year and expect prices to remain flat.

That means Qwest has to continue reducing its cost per bit by more than 40 percent every year to keep up, Poll told Telephony Online. And Poll worries that Moore's Law, which generally governs development in the electrical domain, will not be possible in the optical domain.

“In the optical environment, you have basic physics issues in how you can integrate to bring costs down," he says. "There is no Moore’s Law in the optical world."

If that observation proves correct, Qwest wil have to look for cost reductions elsewhere. Operations, marketing, overhead, sales and other costs might have to be cut if the gains cannot be made in linear fashion on the optical network element front.

One suspects optical suppliers will do better than Poll now forecasts, but the challenge appears to be real.

1.3 Exabytes of Mobile Video Consumed in 2017

Portable laptop and netbook users will consume 1.3 exabytes of video content per month by 2017, a sixty-fold increase over 2009, says Coda Research Consultancy. If that forecast proves correct, mobile video will account for nearly 75 percent of all mobile traffic.

The top region for video consumption will be Asia Pacific, which will account for just over half (53 percent) of all video traffic globally. In contrast, Europe will account for 26 percent of all global video traffic, and North America 14 percent.

The Asia Pacific region will be so prominent because mobile broadband will be for many the primary or exclusive way of getting access to the Internet, the company says.

The report shows that two thirds of global traffic using by portables will be on Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks by 2017.

Nokia Ditches Barcelona

Nokia apparently will not be exhibiting at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2010. MWC is generally considered the paramount global mobility event, so the move probably is one more indicator of potential change of marketing emphasis by equipment and software providers.

It is no surprise that nearly all communications trade shows and conferences have been under pressure for a couple of years as the recession has forced travel cutbacks, as tier one carriers and enterprises have clamped on severe travel restrictions and some enterprises actually seem to be looking to "prove" that videoconferencing actually saves money by reducing travel expenses.

One way to demonstrate such a business case is to force employees to use videoconferencing and other conferencing tools while restricting travel.

Such changes have been occurring rather broadly on the wired network side of the business for a decade or more. In part, global consolidation means suppliers have fewer customers to sell to. Using direct sales channels typically makes more sense in concentrated markets, compared to fragmented markets.

But other changes have occurred as well. Quite aside from those changes, online communication channels obviously have reduced the need for indirect marketing venues, and have allowed for more use of direct channels. Many firms are shifting spending from legacy channels to their own Web channels, for example.

The deep global recession has had an effect as well, but that is a temporary trend. What remains to be seen is the longer term change of marketing techniques and approaches based on use of Web and IP technologies. Among the bigger changes are a shift from "push" to "pull" marketing, for example.