Is a Wireless Duopoly a Good Idea?

Though the notion will strike some as obviously ill-fitting, until 30 years ago, telecom companies were regarded as natural monopolies. There are few places left where that remains the case.

That doesn't necessarily mean there is universal agreement about the best way to foster competition, or which patterns are stable and yet workably competitive. In some cases, network access still is seen as a sort of utility function, with competition between retail providers using a shared wholesale network now seen as the way to harness competition while minimizing investment in expensive access networks. That isn't the pattern in the U.S. market, however.

AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA, with no change in the Verizon Wireless footprint, which would result in nearly 75 percent of U.S. subscribers being served by just two national carriers. In some cases, duopolies arguably have provided workable, though not perfect competition.

In the wireless sphere, some will argue that the analog services duopoly was characterized by low rates of innovation, high prices and modest mass market adoption. Not until new competitors and digital services were unleashed did the mobile industry really reach ubiquity. So some will worry about a return to a national duopoly.

But some also will note that much innovation and competition in the wireless space now is conducted by application and handset providers, and that access is just one element. It will not be a terribly easy analysis to figure out what the "market" is, or how the dynamics of competition now work.

Mallinson: Working through mobile competition pipedreams - FierceWireless:Europe

Kansas City, Kan. to Get Google 1-Gbps Fiber to Home Network

Kansas City, Kansas will get a Google-built 1-Gbps fiber-to-home access network as part of a Google test of what can be done when such networks are available.

Official Google Blog

Buyer Processes for Software and Hardware are Changing

As more business software moves to a cloud-based model, something else is going to change: The way business customers buy software and applications. To an extent probably not yet appreciated, a shift to Internet-delivered software makes it easier for business buyers to focus on business outcomes, not "speeds and feeds."

Buyers will start to focus less on "features" and start to concentrate on the quality of business outcomes enabled by technology, and not the technology itself, said Peter O’Neill, Forrester Research analyst.

That should have implications for sales teams, as it suggests the typical buyer is going to be inclined to look for a discussion of how a particular solution helps an organization boost its chances to grow revenue, or conversely how a given solution helps an organization reduce its costs in some measurable way.

As always, it is a good bet that the more interesting stories will revolve around "growing revenue" rather than "reducing cost." For some suppliers, this will represent a challenging shift. All too often, a hosted IP telephony discussion, or a potential new premises phone system sale, will center on all the features a new solution offers. That doesn't fit with the growing emphasis on "business impact," especially as the actual "buying" becomes easier, since applications can be sourced simply by using the Internet access connection and browser.

By simplifying all the implementation and provisioning tasks, hosted or cloud-based applications mean the buyer can spend more attention on the direct business benefits attached to any solution. That will prove a different, and perhaps more difficult sales challenge, since the pitch will have to be on the business benefits, not the attributes of a given solution. Instead of "our box or software does X, Y and Z," sales forces will have to speak to the ways the deployed solution helps boost revenue, customer acquisition, retention, sales volume or number of prospects that can be contacted in a day.

Buyer Processes for Software and Hardware are Changing

Gartner Identifies 10 Consumer Mobile Applications to Watch in 2012

The most important mobile apps in 2012 will be those that are purpose-built to take advantage of mobile device capabilities and situational use cases, say analysts at Garner. Perhaps the most interesting apps will combine multiple mobile-specific features that use sensor information, combine it with other user-supplied preferences, and then create some sort of commerce activity.

In other words, the mobile experience is becoming a distinct medium from the location-based experience, representing something more than simply a smaller-screen, out of home or "on the go" version of the tethered Internet experience. If you had to pick one element that is most distinctive, it would be "location," the smartphone's ability to use the actual user location, as it changes, to modify the application experience.

Most of the distinctive mobile apps will use location, mapping and directions, in conjunction with other user-supplied data and preferences, to create new experiences and new business models for application and service providers. Context awareness is the new wrinkle.

Gartner Identifies 10 Consumer Mobile Applications to Watch in 2012

How Traditional Telecom Suppliers are Preparing for Mobile Payments

Mitch Cornell, Xius VP, talks about the mobile payments business, particularly illustrating how a traditional provider of prepaid mobile solutions believes its traditional solutions can be "re-purposed" for the mobile payments ecosystem.

Apps Moving to PCs

Enteprise Hierarchies Endangered?

As 24/7 connectivity, social networking, and increased demands for personal freedom further penetrate the walls of the corporation, corporate life will continue to move away from traditional hierarchical structures, a Booz & Co. analysis apparently suggests. Instead, workers, mixing business and personal matters over the course of the day, will self-organize into agile communities of interest.

By 2020, more than half of all employees at large corporations will work in virtual project groups. These virtual communities will make it easier for non-Western knowledge workers to join global teams, and to migrate to the developed world.

The proliferation and increasing sophistication of communication, interaction, and collaboration technologies and tools, and the economics of travel itself, will result in knowledge workers’ traveling much less frequently. Many of you undoubtedly would agree that although work processes are becoming more collaborative and fluid, the hierarchy of authority has not much changed.

The Rise of the Connected Generation: Some Amazing Facts - GLG News

Is Mobile Voice Nearing a Tipping Point?

Sprint has announced very-significant integration of Google Voice, allowing Sprint subscribers to use their Sprint phone numbers to access a full range of Google Voice features, including routing calls to fixed phone numbers, as well as replace Sprint voice mail with the Google Voice voice mail service. That move can be interpreted in numerous ways. At a tactical level, you might say that more-substantial innovations in a market tend to come from contestants that do not have market power, and which need to shake things up.

At another level, you might ask whether a strategic shift has been made at Sprint, in terms of where the single most important revenue stream is coming from. It is no secret that mobile service provider revenue, which has been based on voice, but augmented significantly by text message and now mobile broadband revenue, continues to evolve in the direction of primary reliance on broadband-based services and access. Perhaps Sprint has made a decision to essentially hasten that process by attempting to change the value equation for voice, even if that hastens the demise of voice as a revenue stream in many ways.

"For an operator to work with a company such as Google, which is widely perceived as a significant threat in the most lucrative areas in mobile, and to endorse a service that has previously been seen by many as a threat to core voice revenue, is intriguing," says Steve Costello, GSMA content editor. "At the very least it reflects changing telco attitudes, as the previous business model is swept away by new-entrants from the internet world."

Whether merely tactical, or indicative of a broader strategic shift, the Sprint deal with Google Voice is possible evidence that a turning point is about to be reached, historic for either the fixed-line or mobile businesses, where at least some contestants reach a point in their business development where the growth of broadband revenues and the tempo of innovation has to be spurred, even at the expense of putting further pressure on the core voice services revenue.

Voicing the differences - GSMA Mobile Business Briefing

Unified Communications Goes Social, Because Social is a Competitor

"You can have enterprise social software without unified communications, but no unified communications technology player worth its salt is without an enterprise social media strategy," says David Carr at Information Week.

One might also say that the reason social software now is being grafted onto unified communications systems is that social software to an extent replicates the value claimed for much UC software. Another way of explaining what "social software" is to say it is "collaboration." And collaboration is another way of describing the value of much unified communications.

One might also point out that in many instances, social software can be seen as a replacement for much of what UC is supposed to provide.

Unified Communications Goes Social -- InformationWeek

Better Ad Targeting for GMail

Google's Economic Value $119 Billion?

Here's how an economist would conduct the analysis. Google economist Hal Varian came to the conclusion that Google saves us 3.75 minutes per day, and then used the average U.S. hourly earnings numbers ($22) to calculate that Google saves users $1.37 a day. That number multiplied by 365 days in a year equals $500. Varian then multiplied that $500 number by 130 million, the number of people employed in the US, to get to $65 billion value in savings for users.

Adding those two bottom line numbers $65 billion + $54 billion together results in the rough ballpark of the total value of Google to US users ($119 billion), Varian holds. For comparison Google’s global market cap is $187.04 billion.

But that $119 billion number doesn’t take into account extraneous factors like the value to non-employed. “You should think about these numbers as an underestimate," says Varian. The value of getting answers to questions immediately is a pretty big deal.”

Tablets Now Represent Difference Between Decline and Growth for Worldwide IT Spending

Among other things, tablets now represent all of the difference between "flat" global information technology growth in real terms and a decline in real terms, according to Gartner. On a nominal basis, tablets drive most of the 5.6 percent growth in 2011.

Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.6 trillion in 2011, a 5.6 percent increase from $3.4 trillion in 2010, according to Gartner.

Tablets account for the increase in top-line growth, said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. “Absent the addition of media tablets, the forecast would have slightly declined in constant-dollar terms; however, with their addition, there's virtually no change in underlying forecast growth at the level of overall IT.”

Gartner Says Media Tablets Help Drive Worldwide IT Spending Up 5.6 Percent in 2011

Netflix Canada Creates 3 Streaming Rates

To cope with new user caps in the Canadian market, Netflix has created three different image quality levels for users of the streaming service. The "Good" setting is the default setting and provides good picture quality and lowest data use per hour (about 0.3 GBytes perc hour).

The "Better" setting consumes about 0.7 GBytes per hour. The "Best" setting picture quality consumes about 1.0 GByte an hour, or up to 2.3 GBytes per hour when streaming HD content.

The "Good" setting limits video and audio to 625 kbps and 64 kbps, respectively. The "Better" setting limits video and audio to a maximum of 1300 kbps and 192 kpbs, respectively.

The "Best" setting will use any of the video and audio rates available. The highest quality files are 4800 kbps (for 1080p HD video) and 384 kbps audio (for 5.1 audio).

http://blog.netflix.com/2011/03/netflix-lowers-data-usage-by-23-for.html

AmEx Mobile Payment Addreses "Debit Card" Gap

In yet another take on the mobile payments value and business model, the American Express "Serve" service gets American Express into the "debit card" revenue stream, essentially.

"In our view, this is a bold undertaking for American Express that has the potential to address the company's key strategic weakness, debit," said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Chris Brendler.

Serve could also help extend Amex's reach beyond just the high-end consumer as Serve is clearly targeting the mass market. So in addition to making possible an Amex foray into the debit card revenue stream, it also extends Amex activities in the broad consumer market in a new way.

AmEx's Mobile Payment Scheme to Boost Revenue: Analysts - TheStreet

Is There a Social Networking Bubble?

Bob Metcalfe says "yes," there is a bubble.