AT&T Defends Value of its T-Mobile USA Buy

Whether a new U.S. mobile market remains workably competitive after an AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA is a matter for economists, policymakers and policy advocates to dispute. The analysis will be tougher because one cannot assume that the rest of the market remains unchanged, either. Whether two or three large national competitors is too many or too few to support robust innovation and competition will be something hard to establish in the abstract.

Many will argue a long-term stable market structure will ultimately feature only two dominant national players, but both operating with regional competitors and in an environment where most of the innovation comes from third parties. It isn't so clear that potentially-less "access" competition will have impact as dramatic as if innovation were not coming "over the top." Nor is it clear whether a market dominated by two contenders is not workably competitive. What is clear is that a market with two national players will, at some level, necessarily be less competitive than a market with four contestants.

http://www.att.com/Common/about_us/pdf/INV_PRES_3-21-11_FINAL.pdf

Social Shopping The Year in Numbers

Group Deals Industry Report

Groupon Now to Launch, Deals on the Move

"Groupon Now," a new feature GroupOn will launch soon, will extend Groupon's activities in the mobile promotion and local advertising business, with a huge "geo-location" angle.

Groupon Now will show two simple buttons that likely will have huge impact on the local restaurant trade and local shopping.
The two buttons: "I'm Hungry" and "I'm Bored."

As you might guess, there are huge implications for "liquidity" of information and deals. People will be offered deals at places that satisfy "hunger," right in the immediate area, or offer diversions when a person has free time and wants something to do.

Are Four Words Worth $25 Billion for Groupon? - BusinessWeek:

Post-PBX World?

It isn't yet a "post-PBX" world, but we are moving that way, with the advent of distributed, software-based replacements that run on servers, either at a user's location or remotely, in the cloud.

"But the technology and industry are moving in that direction," says Fred Knight. "For the past decade, we've seen the relentless disassembly of the PBX, to the point where credible and implementable architectures now can be built without a PBX, its functionality, instead, carved up and delivered via a widely distributed network of servers."

No Jitter | blog | Are We In a Post-PBX World?

Ofcom Says 4 4G Providers Best for Competition

U.K. communications regulator Ofcom is preparing for a major auction of spectrum to support fourth-generation mobile services, and has concluded that there would be a significant risk to national wholesale competition if there were fewer than four national wholesale competitors with credible spectrum portfolios for providing higher quality data services.

To guard against this risk, Ofcom proposes introducing limits both on the minimum and maximum amounts of spectrum bidders can win. These are called auction "floors" and "caps," and will ensure that there are four 4G competitors.

Ofcom | Ofcom prepares for 4G mobile auction

Email Blasts Face GMail Filtering

What's helpful for users sometimes is not helpful for marketers, but that's just a reality as users can tailor and filter their message stream. Google's "Priority Inbox" is one example of a helpful sorting and filtering mechanism good for users and arguably not so good for bulk email campaigns.

"Smart Labels" takes Priority Inbox a step further by dividing all inbound communications into three broad categories. The first identifies email from individuals, always placed in the "Important and Unread" section of the Gmail inbox.

The second label is called "Notifications," for news alerts, LinkedIn connections notices, and event updates. These messages are placed into either the 'Important and Unread' section or the 'Everything Else' section of Priority Inbox, depending on subscriber engagement.

The final Smart Label is "Bulk,"which attaches a 'Bulk' label to Everything Else. That often means almost 100 percent of promotional email is immediately placed in the bulk folder, giving the user an easy way to avoid seeing any of it.

Again, good for users, not so helpful for marketers. But all that points to the future of targeted, opt-in, contextual messaging. "Spray and pray" doesn't work so well now. It really won't work in the future.

The Ever-Evolving Inbox and the Future of E-mail Marketing | ClickZ

AT&T Faces Regulatory Hurdle

Media and Telecom Face Similar Problems

It recently has seemed to me that were are some parallels between the U.S. airline industry and the telecom industry; as well as some similarities between the telecom and media industries.

Airlines are capital intensive businesses subject to periodic over-capacity issues, tend to be heavily regulated, though not as heavily as they once were. Both now are heavily competitive, and both have stranded capacity issues.

Airlines cannot sell seats once a plane has departed, and telecom providers often cannot sell services to locations they have spend quite significant sums of money to "wire up for service."Media, on the other hand, has seemed relevant simply because it is a business subject to disruption by new digital delivery systems, much as telecom itself is subject to disruption from over-the-top application providers.

This bit of data is not, I am suggesting, a forecast for the telecom industry. It is rather a factual look at some problems that arguably predate the Internet. Click on the image for a larger view. Classified advertising has taken the brunt of the shrinkage as online alternatives such as Craigslist have created alternatives. But you also can see the shrinkage, roughly in half, of display ad revenues as well.

The comparison that has struck me as germane is that as newspapers are losing revenue and share in their legacy business, so telecom service providers are losing share in their legacy core business of voice. The difference is that, up to this point, telecom service providers have been much more successful at replacing lost revenues with new revenues.

Where long distance once was the revenue mainstay, mobility has taken that role as long distance simply "dried up." Newspapers have yet to make even the first step. Meanwhile, telcos have added video and broadband access service revenues as well, and seem to be taking the first meaningful steps into banking, promotion and location services.

The newspaper example is instructive only because it seems to be an industry that has not been able to innovate, compared to telcos.

Possible Future AT&T Ad Synergies

T-Mobile Online Display Ad Spending
Annual in Millions, 2006-2010
2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
$35m	$29m	$39.3m	$37.4m	$53.8m
Data provided by Kantar Media, 2011

We are a year away from knowing if the AT&T purchase of T-Mobile USA will be approved by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. Assuming the deal does pass muster, there will be all sorts of synergies for the new company: lower backhaul costs in some cases; less overhead; fewer retail stores to support; fewer employees and less advertising than the two firms had been spending.

In T-Mobile USA's case, there is perhaps $54 million that will not be spent after AT&T becomes the new owner. In total, AT&T expects to save about $40 billion.

E-Books 9% of Total Books Sales in January 2011

E-book sales in January 2011 represented about nine percent of total book sales, according to the Association of American Publishers, and have increased "annually and significantly in all nine years of tracking the category," the AAP says.

E-book net sales increased by 115.8 percent over January 2010 (from $32.4 million to $69.9 million).

January 2011 Stats Press Release

AT&T, T-Mobile USA Deal: Video

Does Technology Have to Be Tailored for Older Users?

Some people think technology has to be tailored for older users. Others might think the issue is overblown, since many surveys now show that older users want the same features that younger users enjoy, even if usage rates might be lower.

The argument for different approaches usually is based on technology reluctance or physical issues. It often is assumed that devices optimized for older users need to feature more prominent buttons with bigger letters and numbers, for example, with stripped-down functionality. There are some cases where that might be the case.

But there is a growing body of evidence that, in fact, users in every age demographic are starting to appreciate new technology, and do use it. Not everybody, in every age demographic, is likely to be as enamored of some innovations as others are. But there are few applications you can think of that "only" younger users appreciate. Over time, in fact, application and technology adoption trends tend to normalize across the entire age range, or across the vast portion of it.

That isn't to say there are not differences in intensity of use; obviously there are such differences. But usage across age ranges tends to be a matter of degree, not a matter of adoption.

Does Technology Have to Be Tailored for Older Users?

1996 All Over Again?

We are roughly 16 years past the "Internet" explosion of 1996, the subsequent investment bubble and roughly 10 years past the "Internet meltdown" of 2001. But things are stirring, suggesting we are about to enter yet another big wave of Internet innovation, with the likely over-investment typical of a bubble.

Some might note that in January 2011 Goldman Sachs valued Facebook at $50 billion. Some 30 to 90 days later it is being valued at $60 billion, while similarly rich valuations are bandied about for firms without a sustainable revenue model, at least not yet.

Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers partner Mary Meeker has been noting for a couple of years that the "next wave" of computing is upon us, with a new roster of leading companies likely to rise as well.

The point is that 2011 seems to be a sort of "1996" moment, when a wave of investment, and over-investment, occurs. But if it "feels" to you like there is quite a lot of innovation occurring, you are right. There is.

1996 All Over Again? - Thoughts on Carrier Evolution - Carrier Evolution

Mobile Companies Now "Disruptors," Not the "Disrupted"

If you ask just about any executive in the telecom or cable industries what "disruption" means in the business, and what it looks like, you will undoubtedly find that people talk about competition from new contestants. "Disruption" normally is seen as something that "happens to" telecom or cable providers.

But that's only half the story, and probably not the more-interesting part of the story. In recent days, we have seen some significant potential changes in the wireless part of the business that illustrate a whole new aspect of "disruption." And that difference is that some initiatives in the communications business now are aimed at disruption of another existing business.

True, one might argue that telcos getting into the IPTV or video entertainment, or cable companies getting into voice and data services, also were disruptions.

But there's something more than that going on now, in some other parts of the business. The best examples so far are mobile banking and mobile payments. In both cases, mobile operators are not simply seeking incremental, "line extension" sorts of growth, but seeking to establish leading positions in new businesses that means mobile service providers are the "disruptors," not the "disrupted."

That's a huge change.

Mobile Companies Now "Disruptors," Not the "Disrupted" - Thoughts on Carrier Evolution - Carrier Evolution:

Take a Photo, Pay a Bill, Danish Bank Says

Danish Danske Bank now lets consumers snap a photo of their bill and then simply click to pay.

The downloadable app is available for Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

The app also supports funds transfer and bill payments.

That's one example of how mobile-enabled processes can be different from either online or physical processes.

Snap a photo of a bill, then click to pay - Springwise