Social Media Dominates Asia Pacific Internet Usage | Nielsen Wire

Social media usage has seen unprecedented growth in Asia Pacific in the past year and is now one of the most critical trends in the online sector, according to Nielsen.

A new survey found that three of the seven biggest global online brands are social media sites: Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube.

Close to three quarters of the world’s Internet population (74 percent) have now visited a social networking or blogging site, and Internet users are spending an average of almost six hours per month on social media sites.

Korea is one of the most social media engaged countries in the world, with the country’s leading social media site, Naver, attracting 95 percent of the Korean Internet population every month.

Japanese Internet users are the most avid bloggers globally, posting more than one million blogs per month, significantly more than any other country in the region.

Social Media Dominates Asia Pacific Internet Usage | Nielsen Wire

Cisco Touts "Connected Conversations"

Services, not raw speed, is where consumers think the value of faster broadband will be.

SIP Trunking: Growing, But T1 Remains the Mainstay

Although many organizations have deployed VoIP on their premises, they still use legacy technologies to connect to the PSTN, with T1 lines the most commonly used trunking service today through 2012, according to Infonetics Research.

Much of the SIP trunk demand is fueled by fast-growing hosted IP telephony services. For the first three months of 2009, service providers experienced an average of 40 percent to 50 percent year-over-year growth for IP Centrex, indicating the demand for outsourcing and managed solutions.

Infonetics Research expects hosted UC services to take off, with worldwide revenue doubling between 2009 and 2013, and we forecast SIP trunking service revenue to hit an 89 percent compound annual growth rate from 2008 to 2013.

It also is worth noting that many carriers interconnect with each other using T1 protocols, even if end user service is supplied exclusively in the IP domain.

SIP trunk use is growing, and by 2012 will be the second most commonly deployed trunking service, says Infonetics.

AT&T and Verizon are used most often as providers of SIP trunking services, survey respondents said.

Infonetics Research - SIP trunking gaining on T1 lines as companies seek efficiency

Mobile Subscriptions Hit 5 Billion

Mobile broadband subscriptions will reach 3.4 billion by 2015, up from from 360 million in 2009, Ericsson forecasts. Ericsson also predicts 80 percent of all people accessing the Internet will be doing so using their mobile device.

In 2000, about 720 million people had mobile subscriptions, less than the amount of users China alone has today.

The way Internet access gets used also will shift. Mobile subscriptions allow people who don't have access to a bank or a bank account to transfer money; fishermen and farmers can get quick updates on sudden changes in the weather forecast, villagers to get local medical care, and children to access online education.

Mobile subscriptions hit 5 billion mark - Ericsson

Most VoIP LInes Sold as Part of a Bundle

Most VoIP service is sold as part of a bundle, data from the Federal Communications Commission shows.

About 79 percent of IP telephony or VoIP lines sold by cable companies or competitive local exchange carriers are sold as part of a bundle, and intended to be used at a fixed location.

About 90 percent of IP telephony or VoIP lines sold by incumbent telcos are sold as part of a bundle, and intended to be used at a fixed location.

Tiered Mobile Pricing Hasn't Had Any Repercussions, Yet

AT&T's move to new tiered mobile data plans does not seem to have provoked much consumer protest, or much apparent change in usage, content provider strategies or even competitive responses from other wireless providers. That doesn't mean there will not be impact, though.

Content providers, application developers and OEM manufacturers have sought to provide the richest multimedia streams, the most interactive apps and the most eye-popping displays and capabilities to consumers, with no concern for impact on bandwidth consumption.

For some consumers, bandwidth consumption will start to become an issue. That might ultimately force some rethinking of device and application design, and some rethinking of business models and partnerships. Firms that

expected to stream video to end users, either for free or as subscription services, might have to think about how bandwidth caps now will potentially affect those business models.

On the other hand, some content providers might have new incentives to figure out ways they can work with mobile service providers in ways that take away bandwidth concerns.

Some might find a partnership, where content provider and access provider share revenue, might go a long ways toward creation of new "video service plans" that allow consumption outside any existing caps.

Yankee Group :: Research Report

Cheaper Cable TV Packages?

Don't hold your breath, but U.S. cable executives might be quietly mulling creation of more-affordable packages that cost something more like $25 a month to 40 a month than $80 a month, Reuters reports.

There would have to be quite a bit of negotiating with the cable programming networks, which typically want the broadest possible carriage they can get. Offering more-affordable tiers of service necessarily would limit carriage of many channels.

Some Wall Street analysts reportedly have warned the cable industry could harm itself by continuing to raise prices well ahead of the rate of inflation. Of course, some will speculate that the floating of "affordable new tiers" might also be a negotiating tactic by cable operators in advance of contract renewal talks.

Both cable operators and programmers are aware that most people watch a dozen or fewer channels, no matter how many are available. The problem is that it is not the same 12, from one person to the next.

Cable companies, networks mull smaller TV bundles | Reuters

Mobile Voice Will Keep Growing, Despite Pressures

Though growth will slow at some point, it does not immediately appear that mobile voice revenue on a global basis, at least, is in any danger of serious erosion, according to the Yankee Group. Average revenue per user is dropping, but the number of users is growing.

By some estimates, the world has added one billion new wireless customers in just 18 months, for example.

Global average revenue per user will fall from U.S.$14.28 in 2009 to U.S.$11.38 in 2014, Yankee Group predicts.

But paid minutes of use will offset most of those ARPU declines.

Yankee Group :: Research Report

How Long Does it Take to Add 1 Billion Mobile Subs?

It has taken just 18 months for one billion new subscribers to get mobile services. There now are five billion global mobile subscribers, according Wireless Intelligence.

The firm predicts that the six billion mark will be achieved in the first half of 2012. Mobile penetration on a global basis now is 74 percent, compared to 60 percent at when there were only four billion subscribers. The highest penetrated region is Western Europe on 130 percent, while the lowest is Africa on 52 percent. Eastern Europe (123 percent) is the only other global region to have passed 100 percent mobile penetration.

Wireless Intelligence — Analysis — Global mobile connections surpass 5 billion milestone

65% of Mobile Users "Text;" 30% Download Apps

About 65 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device in May 2010, up 1.4 percentage points compared to the prior three month period, while browsers were used by 32 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.3 percentage points).

About 30 percent of the mobile audience downloaded apps, an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the previous period. Accessing of social networking sites or blogs also saw significant growth, increasing 2.6 percentage points to 21 percent of mobile subscribers.

comScore Reports May 2010 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share - comScore, Inc

49 Million U.S. Smartphones in Service

49.1 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May 2010, up 8.1 percent from the corresponding February period.

Research in Motion was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 41.7 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.4 percent share and Microsoft with 13.2 percent.

Google saw significant growth during the period, up four percentage points to 13 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Palm rounded out the top five with 4.8 percent.

comScore Reports May 2010 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share - comScore, Inc

Cable Chills in Advance of Potential Net Neutrality Ruling

Regulation has a huge impact on communications and multi-channel video entertainment companies (telcos and cable), and the reason is quite simple: regulation creates, conditions or damages the business opportunity. Lots of observers would predict that imposition of strong network neutrality rules, by limiting growth options, would have clear negative impact on equity values, ability to raise capital and ultimately revenue, cash flow and profit.

It appears some of the damage is caused simply by raising the specter of such changes. "'The FCC has voted itself a loaded gun, pointed it at the carriers (cable and telco alike) and then promised not to shoot," said Craig Moffett, Bernstein Research analyst.

'What is clear ... is that we are now facing a protracted period -- likely years long -- of enormous uncertainty,' Moffett said.

"The bull case for cable stocks is a simple one," Moffett wrote. "Cable wins the broadband wars. But the prospect for broadband price regulation cuts to the heart of that thesis."

Comcast, Cablevision stocks fall on cloudy outlook The Ratings Game - MarketWatch

100 Million Mobile YouTube Playbacks Every Day

YouTube Mobile now receives more than 100 million video playbacks a day. This is roughly the number of daily playbacks that YouTube.com was streaming when YouTube was acquired by Google in 2006.

YouTube Blog

YouTube Adds HTML5 Site

YouTube is launching a new mobile site optimized for HTML5, m.youtube.com, as well as a new mobile app pointed at the site.

The web app apparently has superior video quality when compared to native applications on the iPhone and will soon feature more content as well. Both iPhone and Android devices will get the new app.

Does Information Really "Want to be Free"?

"On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable,' said writer Stewart Brand in 1984. 'The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."

All information is not equal. Some types of information are so valuable (the current price of lots of commodities) that spending huge amounts of money to discover price, and act on it, are justifiable. Other sorts of information do not have these characteristics.

But there is no single rule that adequately describes information economics.

MinnPost - The end of the free Internet?