Still Some Skepticism About LTE, In Some Quarters

Apparently some in Europe simply don't believe that fourth-generation LTE networks actually are going to be in commercial service this year, in the United States. And that isn't to argue about whether LTE-Advanced is that "only" LTE. Apparently there is some skepticism about the earlier, commercial versions as well.

Apparently there is some merit to being able to buy it, at a retail store, and use it in many cities, as an aid to belief.

Uncovering the U.S. LTE 'conspiracy'

Consumer, Business PC Markets Divergomg?

The latest round of earnings reports might suggest a divergence of consumer and business PC trends. Hewlett-Packard's consumer PC revenue was down 11 percent from last year for the quarter ended January 31, 2011. In contrast, sales of PCs to businesses were up 12 percent.

Dell consumer revenue was down eight percent from last year in the last quarter of 2010. The company appears have done adequately selling to large enterprises and businesses.

Microsoft: revenue from sales of Windows on new PCs was up three percent from last year in the last quarter of 2010. Microsoft says the business PC refresh cycle -- not consumers -- is driving growth in Windows.

One might conclude that consumers are flocking to tablets, while businesses are continuing to hold up Windows PC sales.

Apple sold 7.3 million iPads last quarter, while Mac unit sales were up 23 percent in the last quarter of 2010. Is it a permanent trend?

Tablets Are Hurting The Consumer PC Market

Sprint Selects BilltoMobile to Enable Subscribers to Charge Online Purchases to Their Wireless Bill - Barrons.com

BilltoMobile has reached a deal allowing Sprint customers to charge online purchases directly to their Sprint bill. Once implementation is complete in the coming months, merchants and payment resellers using BilltoMobile's mobile payment service will be able to offer this payment option to Sprint customers.

BilltoMobile already had signed deals with AT&T and Verizon Wireless, giving the firm access to about 85 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers.

https://www.billtomobile.com/about/press/news/BilltoMobile_SprintAnnouncement_021811_FINAL.pdf

Facebook Replacing Mobile Communications?

Mobile and fixed service providers face all sorts of competitors, most of them indirect. Email and instant messaging, for example, cannibalize some amount of voice traffic, as do over-the-top services such as Skype. In other cases, over-the-top applications simply "suck up all the oxygen in the room" by usurping the revenue created by those apps. In past years, telcos might have preferred to create the apps and keep the revenue themselves.

Some even think Facebook is in competition with mobile operators. Facebook has an integration deal with Skype for voice communications and in November 2010 unveiled an email offering.

In the Philippines, for example, the National Telecommunications Commission reports declining text message volumes as more people communicate with each other through the web and web-based apps.

The agency said that in 2009, the average Filipino user sent about 30 text messages per day, or a total of well over two billion messages. If the volume of those messages declines, there will be revenue implications for mobile service providers.

Business - Social network sites threaten to topple telco titans - INQUIRER.net

Square Drops 15-Cent Fee for Credit Card Purchases

Square says it is dropping the 15-cent transaction fee when merchants use its mobile payment system, and instead will take what is an interchange fee of of 2.75 percent of the gross sales amount.

The change is helpful for many of the small merchants who use Square, namely high-volume, low amount transactions.

Square Drops $0.15 Fee for Credit Card Purchases

U.S. Cable Operators Will Lose 6 Million Households by 2015

U.S. cable operators will lose six million more customers by 2015, predicts Jonathan Doran, Ovum analyst, down from 60 million households in 2010 to 54 million households.

Doran estimates that U.S. households subscribing to cable dropped by four million between 2007 and 2010. The losses will come from a combination of share losses to satellite and telco competitors, plus some amount of replacement by online services.

Datamonitor | Media Center | New generation of TV services begin to close gap on cable

Dwolla Promises Retailers Lower Transaction Costs

Much of the original premise behind mobile payments was that it could lead to lower merchant transaction fees. That has not always proven to be the case, but Dwolla claims it does deliver on the promise.

Augmented Reality for Navigation

The downside for video-assisted navigation services used by auto drivers is that they might be tempted to look at the screen, instead of keeping their eyes on the road. This is useful, but potentially also a source of distracted driving danger.

Mobile Payments Boosts Ecosystem Value

Mobile and fixed service providers these days continually face the challenge of adapting their services in ways that preserve or create significant roles in the Internet, application, broadband access and voice ecosystems. In that regard, mobile payments and banking are significant precisely because those sorts of services are amenable to leverage.

In other words, service providers have other assets they can bring to bear that offer a substantial role in the creation of value, and presumably, therefore, a substantial role in revenues and profit within the ecosystem. It isn't that mobile banking and mobile payments cannot be offered "over the top," as virtually all other applications now can. It is rather that mobile service providers have existing assets to leverage, typically described as including active billing relationships with hundreds of millions of customers.

“Google’s massive, but Google does not have a billing relationship with 99 percent of its customers,” Deutsche Telekom Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Ed Kozel said in an interview last week. “That’s our opportunity.”

Also, some ways of conducting mobile banking and payments make use of text messaging, a service mobile operators largely control. In principle, mobile service providers also have billing systems set up to handle micro-payments, a potentially significant part of the overall mobile payments business.

Tablets also represent an opportunity. Online or virtual goods payments are growing in volume, and tablets should provide a richer environment for that sort of activity, especially as tablets develop as significant platforms for gaming and content consumption.

By some estimates, the retail mobile payments business could account for a third of the $1.13 trillion global market in mobile transactions by 2014, according to IE Market Research. Note the obverse, that other transactions will represent two thirds of mobile activity.

`Mega' Payments Race Pits Google, Visa Against Phone Operators - Bloomberg

Amazon Streaming Video Service Has an Advantage

In business, it typically is advantageous when one competitor can afford to merchandise (give away) something of value that other competitors charge for.

Amazon, for example, now offers an instant video streaming service for its U.S. "Amazon Prime" customers. Amazon Prime is its $79 a year service which includes free two-day shipping for Amazon customers. The deal is that Amazon Prime members get access to Amazon's streaming service for no additional cost.

To be sure, Amazon's service currently offers unlimited, commercial-free and instant streaming of 5,000 movies and TV shows, where Netflix offers something on the order of 20,000 items. The Netflix streaming-only subscription costs $7.99 per month, which adds up to about $96 a year.

The point is that Amazon has another way to monetize its service, compared to Netflix.

AMAZON TAKES AIM AT NETFLIX: Instant Streaming Of 5,000 Movies And TV Shows Part Of Amazon Prime

VoIP Bandwidth Calculator

I recently ran into a cable TV executive who reported some issues with a recent business hosted IP telephony installation. The issue was the sizing of the upstream bandwidth. Apparently, the issue was that the hosted IP telephony system also was interacting with some premises gear that essentially required four call paths to set up a session.

Here's a table to estimate the bandwidth required to support a given number of lines (voice paths) across a broadband connection, using a variety of codecs, and assuming you do not have the aforementioned problem.

VoIP Bandwidth Calculator

Will Apple’s Subscription Plan Drive Developers to Android?

Google and Apple are in a building race for the loyalties of content providers and developers using their respective application stores.

While the iPhone has the largest app store, Google recently overtook Nokia and other phone manufacturers with the largest mobile operating system market share.

Google's "One Pass" will allow publishers to sell subscriptions with better terms than they can get with Apple. Google is only taking a 10 pecent share of the revenues, will Apple takes 30 percent.

Will Apple’s subscription plan spark a developer exodus? | VentureBeat

Why is NCR Renting DVDs?

You might have seen Blockbuster DVD rental kiosks in grocery stores. Those kiosks actually are owned by NCR. You might wonder why NCR is in that business. Basically, NCR is doing so as a way of increasing demand for its automated terminals, and to gain operating knowledge that could be helpful as NCR attempts to create new uses for automated terminals.

Today NCR makes most of its money from automated teller machines and retail checkout systems. Nobody knows yet how much more that might change in the future, but observers might point to substantial use of retail kiosks in Japan, for example, as pointing to the possibility that consumers might want to buy a broader array of products from kiosks in the future.

Who Should Buy Blockbuster? - Seeking Alpha

How Airlines Use Twitter

Social media is a two-edged sword, a tool brands can use, but also a tool consumers can use. Note that United Continental gets 57 percent negative tweets.

It's tough to control a brand message when that level of negative commentary is being posted.

France Could Outlaw Skype

Many executives in the telecommunications industry, a decade ago, thought it was unfair that VoIP services such as Skype did not have to abide by many of the rules that govern providers of public telecommunications service. Contributions to universal service funds and payment of taxes were sticking points.

Skype is not "registered" as a "telecommunications provider" in France. Skype also has been the subject of legal proceedings in France for that reason. So it appears the issues will be raised again.

France Could Outlaw Skype