Submarine Cable Refresh Cycle Approaches

With the caveat that "where" a fiber or cable is makes a huge difference, we are approaching a couple-year period where existing cables laid 10 to 12 years ago will reach 50 percent of capacity.

That will be a trigger for laying replacement cables.

If you assume a 20-year useful life for new optical fibers put into service, then irrespective of loading, service providers would have to begin thinking about replacement as a matter of course.

Some suppliers will argue they can enhance the useful life of such fibers. Susan Vandament, XK director of business development, for example, says her firm has tested older fibers and found its gear could boost performance above what one might expect. If that proves to be the case for older cables, submarine cable network providers might squeeze a bit more life out of existing cables.

read more here

SuperBowl Ad Strategy Still Works, Groupon Finds

Produce an ad you are fairly certain to be rejected. Get word of mouth about the rejected ad. Get views. Don't pay $2.5 million to $2.8 million. In this case, Groupon itself says it "rejected" the ad. It's the same concept.

Nexus X Tablet Boot-Up Screen

Not a suggestion you buy a tablet device for the boot-up screen. But it won't hurt, either. And here's a bit more detail on the new Android tablet operating system, "Honeycomb."

Starbucks Mobile Payment System Didn't Use NFC for a Reason

Technology decisions ought to be dictated by business requirements, and so should the timing of technology investments. Generally speaking, if a business can wait for the "next generation" of technology, it often should do so. If it cannot wait, and has an immediate business need, it should buy the existing solutions, especially if there is an upgrade path.

The Starbucks mobile-payment app, now available for iPhones, the iPod Touch and several BlackBerry models, is based on the coffee chain’s popular prepaid Starbucks Card, and is an example of that sort of process. You might wonder why Starbucks would deploy a 2D bar code solution now, when it could wait 18 months to two years and possibly use a new system based on one or more near field communications platforms.

The answer is that Starbucks did not think it could afford to wait. Nor, in one respect, is the Starbucks mobile payment system primarily about "payment." It is about loyalty, especially the Starbucks card.

Customers use the private-label card for one in five transactions at Starbucks coffee shops and last year loaded $1.5 billion in their card accounts, up more than 20 percent from 2009, said the company. Since the mobile payment app is linked to the Starbucks card, and since the Starbucks card itself if more about loyalty than "payment" as such, Starbucks is betting that the chance to extend its loyalty program to the mobile handset is worth doing right away.

Not unimportant is the fact that 2D bar codes can be used by a wide range of handsets, while near field communications is only now starting to be introduced. In a scale business, the advantage of large installed base is obvious. So is the fact that the terminal upgrades at roughly 8,000 locations are modest.

With the app, after the customer scans the 2-D bar code at the point of sale, Starbucks deducts the amount of the purchase from his Starbucks Card account over the network.

The physical implementation might not be the most elegant imaginable (one has to have a physical Starbucks card first, and you have to obtain one physically, at a store), but that was not apparently the most-important consideration. Speed to market, low cost and ubiquity seem to have been the overriding considerations.

Starbucks’ Bar-Code Embrace Unlikely to Slow NFC

Mobile Shoppers: Some Prefer Apps, Some Mobile Web

Even though half of all mobile phone owners are mobile shoppers, they are not all equal. A very small group are actually driving the majority of mobile shopping. In fact, that group – dubbed “heavy mobile users”-- generate ten times more shopping than “light users.” See Retail's BIG Blog | Three tips for marketing to the mobile shopper

Heavy shoppers tend to do things like check store hours and addresses, use shopping apps weekly, and experiment with new mobile marketing technology in greater numbers and more frequently than other shoppers. They also skew younger, male and toward using the iPhone.

Light shoppers, by contrast, skew female and are more likely to use other devices such as Android and BlackBerry phones, according to an Arc Worldwide survey.

UK Telco O2 Will Become a "Bank"

Telefonica O2 UK plans to launch a number of mobile-wallet services in the second half of 2011, among the most significant a move to become a "bank" of sorts, or perhaps the equivalent of a credit card or debit card issuer.

Among the wallet services O2 plans to offer will be contact-less payment that could include one or more payment applications the telco issues itself. But O2, one of the United Kingdom’s largest mobile operators with more than 20 million subscribers, plans a number of other services, including mobile browsing and product search, mobile-money transfers between subscribers and bill payments.

UK Telco O2 Prepares For Bigger Push into Payments Business | NFC Times – Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

AT&T Points to "Talk and Surf" Features of its iPhones

Citi relies on multiple mobile channels for customer engagement

Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank is placing mobile at the center of its customer engagement strategy, with cost-cutting and revenue-generation significant fringe benefits, says Mobile Commerce Daily.

The financial services giant has applications for Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, a mobile Web site that is optimized for smartphones and Citi text banking, which lets customers check their account balances, view recent activity and see credit card statements via SMS. In addition, Citi is integrating social media into its mobile platforms.

Citi relies on multiple mobile channels for customer engagement

Mobile banking apps pose security concerns

Despite the rapidly increasing levels of smartphone use among American consumers, and the consequent opportunity to consolidate consumer loyalty in banking and other industries, mobile software used to access bank websites often does not yet meet most security standards, according to a report from American Banker.

The magazine said testing performed by Chicago-based computer security firm viaForensics had found critical security loopholes - enabling researchers to access transaction data, usernames, and passwords - in well over three quarters of the mobile banking applications tested, running on both Android-based smartphones and Apple's iPhone.

Trust is crucial for banking and virtually all other economic transactions, so such concerns will have to be addressed before wider adoption is possible, especially since the banking infrastructure in the United States is highly developed, unlike the situation in other parts of the world, especially sub-Saharan Africa, for example.

Right now, mobile banking is a "nice to have" sort of feature, while in Africa mobile often can function as the banking system itself.

Report: Mobile phone applications for banking websites still pose security concerns

Net Neutrality is a Regulatory ‘Trojan Horse'

"The Federal Communications Commission’s net-neutrality decision opens the FCC to “boundless authority to regulate the internet for whatever it sees fit,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation says.

The EFF favors net neutrality but worries whether the means justify the ends.

“We’re wholly in favor of net neutrality in practice, but a finding of ancillary jurisdiction here would give the FCC pretty much boundless authority to regulate the internet for whatever it sees fit," EFF says.

FCC Net Neutrality is a Regulatory ‘Trojan Horse,’ EFF Says Wired.com:

Corning Expects High Demand for Tablet, Smartphone Glass

Corning expects its annual sales to grow more than 50 percent to $10 billion by 2014, driven by surging demand for ultra-thin glass used in television monitors, smart phones and touch-screen tablets.

The world's biggest maker of liquid-crystal-display glass predicts the global appetite for flat-panel LCD TVs, computers and mobile devices will drive up industry volume to around 5 billion square feet in 2014 from 3.1 billion square feet now.

Corning estimates that tablet computer sales could grow from roughly 20 million units last year to almost 180 million by 2014.

Corning Expects High Demand for TV Glass - NYTimes.com

Verizon iPhone Might Get Lots of AT&T Customers, Survey Suggests

 It is clear that Verizon Wireless ran out of Apple iPhones on the first day they were made available. What remains unclear is how many of those switchers were already Verizon Wireless customers, and how many were switchers who had been using another provider.

A new uSamp survey suggested 47 percent of current AT&T iPhone customers were“very unlikely” to switch to Verizon Wireless right away. About 12 percent said it is “somewhat unlikely.”

Still, about 26 percent of AT&T customers say they are “very likely” (eight percent) or “somewhat likely” (18 percent) to switch to Verizon’s iPhone on the first day it is available.

The top two reasons Verizon’s current smartphone users do not plan to give up their androids or BlackBerrys in favor of the iphone: conversion costs (46 percent) and the keyboard (34 percent).  other reasons not
to switch included functions such as e-mail and messaging (23 percent), maps and GPS (23 percent), customization and widgets (20 percent), web browser (19 percent) and, for BlackBerry users, BlackBerry messenger (28 percent).

By contrast, a majority of Verizon’s current Android and BlackBerry users say they intend to head to Apple as soon as the iPhone hits the shelves. Some 54 percent are very likely (25 percent) or somewhat likely (29 percent) to
go iPhone as soon as the device is available.

About 66 percent of BlackBerry users indicated they are "very" or "somewhat likely" to switch to the iPhone immediately, as are nearly half of its android users (44 percent).

Current iPhone users on AT&T's network indicate that dropped calls are the chief driver of change. About 48 percent suggested they were going to switch to Verizon because of dropped calls. But  carrier coverage (25 percent) or product features (22 percent) also were mentioned as reasons for switching.

The survey by uSamp included more than 700 smartphone users.

read more here

Apple iPhone From AT&T or Verizon?

Walt Mossberg takes a look at the devices and the networks.

The Way "Disrupters" Think

I recently had an instructive conversation with a colleague I hadn't actually seen for more than a year, that amply illustrates how would-be "market disrupters" think. Keep in mind that "disruptors" have different business objectives than traditional executives might. A conventional approach might have companies N+1 and N+2 entering a market lead by company N because N+1 and N+2 believe they can take significant market share away from N.

Venture capitalists might fund company N+1 because the firm has technology that is 10 times better than that of company N that leads the market.

But here's another way of looking at the matter. There is an existing market worth 100x revenue and 300y usage. Disruptor firm N+1 has a business plan aimed at boosting usage to 400y but shrinking revenue to 10x. N+1 will do well because it will get a share of the 10x where N+1 now has no revenue.

N+1 knows it does not have to take share in the traditional way to disrupt the market, any more than Skype had to take away much existing international long distance to affect pricing across the entire market.  N+1 simply has to gain enough recognition as a viable supplier, with dramatically-lower retail pricing, in the customer base.

The difference is in the notion of "growing" a market compared to "destroying" a market.

"End of Profit" for Mobile Service Providers in 4 Years?

Mobile service providers in developed regions of North America, Asia, Pacific and Western Europe markets could face they are no longer profitable in about four years, according to a new study by Tellabs.

Researchers looked at mobile service provider financial performance across the globe, and the fact that the study is called "The End of Profit" should tell you most of what you need to know about the fundamental trend.

See a summary here..

The study shows that widely-held industry beliefs about rising costs and falling revenues are correct. If the trends assumed in the model do not change significantly, if the assumptions are correct, and if service providers do not change, carriers in each region can expect to see an end of profit within a four year window.

That bears repeating. In the absence of relatively significant changes, mobile service provides, arguably in a better position than fixed-line providers to capture growth, will cease to be profitable within four years. The median expectation is that U.S. mobile service providers will reach "zero profitability" by the fourth quarter of 2013.

Service providers in developed nations in the Asia and Pacific region could reach zero profitability by the third quarter of 2014.

In certain regions, this point could be reached much sooner, Tellabs believes. It is clear that carriers are facing significant challenges in balancing cost and revenue. Mobile service providers in Western Europe could reach zero profitability by the first quarter of 2015.