19% of North American Enterprises Expanding Carrier Ethernet Adoption This Year

About 29 percent of  North American enterprises surveyed by Forrester Research say they already have deployed carrier Ethernet services and 19 percent are expanding their current deployments.

So just a bit under half of North American enterprises already are buying carrier Ethernet services, with a bit more than half of the enterprises still to buy their first carrier Ethernet services.

In 2009 about a third of North American enterprises were purchasers of carrier Ethernet, representing growth of about 14 percentage points in 12 months.

About 51 percent of North American enterprises use Ethernet for access. About 19 percent have implemented a network based on Ethernet point-to-point circuits. By the end of 2010, this will have grown to 31 percent.

Some 16 percent of North American enterprises have moved to a network based on Ethernet multipoint services. By the end of 2010, this proportion will have risen to 26 percent.

- Sony Ericsson to stop using Symbian

Sony Ericsson is to stop making smartphones featuring Nokia’s Symbian operating system, meaning Nokia will be the only significant manufacturer to use Symbian. Obviously, that means the end of the effort to promote Symbian as an open source platform.

Sony Ericsson said on Friday that it wanted to focus on using Google’s Android and the Microsoft Mobile operating systems for its smartphones.

FT.com / Technology - Sony Ericsson to stop using Symbian system

Mobile is Most-Owned U.S. Gadget

Of what it calls the "seven key appliances of the information age," the mobile phone is far and away the device of choice for U.S. consumers, say researchers at the  Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Fully 85 percent of Americans now own a cell phone, including 96 percent of people 18 to 29 years old.

About 76 percent of Americans own either a desktop or laptop computer as well. Since 2006, laptop ownership has grown dramatically (from 30 percent to 52 percent) while desktop ownership has declined slightly.

Just under half of American adults (47 percent) own an MP3 player such as an iPod, a nearly five-fold increase from the 11 percent who owned this type of device in early 2005, the Pew Research Center says.

Game consoles are nearly as common as MP3 players, as 42 percent of Americans own a home gaming device. Parents (64 percent) are nearly twice as likely as non-parents (33 percent) to own a game console.

Tablet computers and e-book readers, as you would expect, have not reached those levels of ownership, yet. However, these devices are proving popular with traditional early adopter groups such as the affluent and highly educated, the Pew Center reports.

Ownership rates for tablets and e-book readers among college graduates and those earning $75,000 or more per year are roughly double the national average.

Steve Ballmer Explains Why College Grads Should Work for Microsoft

 Steve Ballmer gets asked by a Seattle audience why college grads should go work for Microsoft instead of some other firms one might think of.

Half Of Broadband Users ‘Don’t Care’ About Speed

Almost half of U.K. broadband users don’t care how fast their Internet connection is, as long as it works, a new survey has found.

In a study of 5,200 U.K. consumers carried out by YouGov and commissioned by BSkyB, only 30 percent said they were frustrated with the consistency of their Internet speed, with 44 percent claiming they “don’t know” or “don’t care” how fast their connection is.

Meanwhile, just six percent said that speed alone was important, with 39 percent preferring value for money and 36 percent claiming that customer satisfaction was their top priority.

“What this research has done is to cut through the noise around broadband speeds and listen to what the majority of broadband users say about what matters to them,” said Delia Bushell, Sky’s Director of Broadband and Telephony. “In short, people want broadband that works, transparency over what they are getting, and a price that suits their pocket.

Those results are consistent with some studies of U.S. consumers as well. "Speed" often seems more important to service providers as a marketing platform than it is to buyers of broadband access services, who seem to be signaling by their buying, not just their attitudes when surveyed, that beyond a certain point, additional speed doesn't provide enough value to justify spending the extra money.

Half Of Broadband Users ‘Don’t Care’ About Speed | eWEEK Europe UK

More Granular Mobile Data Plans from Verizon Wireless

Verizon's new mobile broadband plans for the Apple iPad seem crafted for usage somewhere between smartphones and PCs.

Smartphone owners typically are expected to consume hundreds of kilobytes a month.

Users of mobile broadband for their notebooks or netbooks might consume a couple gigabytes a month.

Tablets that might be used heavily for content consumption could in some cases represent heavier demand that that, but not as much as many PCs on fixed connections. More granular pricing will be helpful, even though users might be expected to worry that they do not know enough right now to pick the best plan.

Carriers can help by providing better usage tools, communicating with customers and by being more flexible about allowing end users to shift plans when their usage behaviors change.

Users have gotten pretty comfortable with "buckets of usage," and mobile broadband buckets ultimately should be as acceptable as voice buckets have been.

Prioritized Gaming an Example of Why Net Neutraltiy Might Not be a Good Thing

Demon, a U.K. ISP, has created a new broadband package that prioritizes gaming traffic, a prime example of why network neutrality can reduce end user value.

The ISP's new "Game Pro" broadband will prioritize gamer traffic, providing a better experience for users who want that capability.

Demon will essentially give an assured rate to anyone willing to shell out the extra £3 a month for the gaming broadband. The Game Pro package starts at £23 a month.

"What we're doing is putting gamers into a business grade network," Carl Warner, Demon manager says.

Off peak, there will be no usage restrictions, but those who sign up to the package will be limited to 100GB a month between 8am and 11pm - which Demon said was double the top usage needed according to gaming companies it asked.

Demon to prioritise gaming broadband traffic

Android and Mobile OS Trends

Google: When You See a Product Hockey Stick Growth Curve, Pour it On

Google's philosophy when it comes to allocating money and resources: If the graph of a product's growth looks like a hockey stick, pour fuel on the fire.

And it looks like Google Instant will be available on mobiles this year.

Multiple Android App Stores a "Net Win" for Android

Google apparently believes Android app stores operated by other companies, such as Verizon, possibly Amazon or Best Buy, are a "net win," since the goal of the app stores is to create revenue for developers, not Google.

To the extent that multiple Android stores support that goal, it is a win for everybody in the ecosystem.

Where Consumers Spend Their Communications-Related Money

Whatever else we might say about where U.S consumers spend their money on communications and entertainment, it seems clear enough they prefer to spend on broadband and Internet than voice, on video entertainment more than wireless.

see more here

Will Communications or Entertainment Spending Take a Dip?

There generally is a very-stable relationship between household income and household spending on communications and entertainment.

Over quite long periods of time, the percentage of household income spent on communications or entertainment is unusually stable as a percentage of total household disposable income.

What could be important, for that reason, is any change in the amount of household income. One wouldn't be surprised to see an unexpected bit of a dip in the percentages as the "recovery" continues to struggle along.

If household income falls, people will wind up paying a higher percentage of total disposable income, or will have to adjust communications or entertainment spending downward.

Google making $1 billion a year from mobile

The thing about big companies is that any new proposed revenue stream has to be pretty big to get any interest.

So it is probably worth noting that Google’s non-text display advertising has an “annualized run rate” of $2.5 billion, while mobile business is on track to make $1 billion in revenue this year.

Google making $1 billion a year from mobile

Google Instant is about User Experience, Not Revenue, At This Point

Jonathan Rosenberg , SVP Product Management at Google, says that “from a revenue standpoint impact, Google Instant has been minimal.”

From a resource standpoint, it's more expensive. So why do it? People like it. That doesn't mean there is no revenue-related reason to do it. To the extent that it glues users to Google for search, it is worth it. If other revenue opportunities arise later, that's good. But right now, it might be more a cool feature than an immediate driver of revenue.

Impact of ‘Google Instant’ on Revenue Is Minimal, But People Love It

Verizon to Sell iPads, Packaged with a Mi-Fi

Verizon Wireless is going to start selling the Apple iPad. You might wonder what the angle is, and it is that the iPad will be bundled with a MiFi, giving Verizon Wireless a recurring revenue stream.