Why Family Mobile Data Plans are Coming

There are a couple of good reasons why U.S. mobile service providers will offer multiple-device mobile broadband plans, at some point relatively soon. Historically, plans of this sort have been quite effective at encouraging the addition of incremental users and devices. 


Family plans worked well to create incentives for parents to outfit their children with mobile phones, by lowering the incremental cost of adding the next device. Family plans also discourage churn. 


In the past, family plans have lowered barriers to use of voice and text messaging services, but mobile broadband has to be bought for every discrete device on the plan, with no advantage to the end user for volume purchases. 


As users, especially the higher average revenue users, adopt and use multiple devices benefiting from mobile broadband access, the attractiveness of "family" data plans will grow. A big surge in tablet ownership in the December 2011 holiday and Christmas season illustrated what you might have expected, namely that wealthier households own and use more tablets and other gadgets. 


According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, adults over the age of 18 tend to own and use many mobile and portable devices. That is especially true for tablet users and e-reader users, who are more likely to own mobile phones, desktop PCs and e-reading devices, for example. 

25% of Households Worldwide Now Have Wi-Fi

At the end of 2011, 439 million households worldwide had installed home Wi-Fi networks, equivalent to 25 percent of all households, according to Strategy Analytics. 


The firm predicts that the total worldwide number of Wi-Fi households will reach nearly 800 million in 2016, a penetration rate of 42 percent.

Wi-Fi Households – Penetration of Total Households: 17 Selected Countries in 2011

Wi-Fi Household Penetration %						2011
South Korea						80.3%
United Kingdom						73.3%
Germany						71.7%
France						71.6%
Japan						68.4%
Canada						67.8%
Italy						61.8%
USA						61.0%
Spain						57.1%
Australia						53.8%
Czech Republic						31.6%
Mexico						31.5%
Poland						28.0%
Russia						22.9%
China						21.8%
Brazil						20.4%
India						2.5%

Consumer Mobile App Revenues to Pass $50 billion by 2016

Juniper Research has projected that annual revenues from consumer mobile applications will approach $52 billion by 2016 as consumer smart phone adoption accelerates in tandem with the emergence of a mass tablet market. The forecast might raise some pertinent questions.


Just what will that new revenue stream indicate about the emerging role of tablets in the device universe, and what, in turn, tablet apps might mean for the devices we know as "personal computers." Much will hinge on how that new revenue is created. Some will consist of content purchases. Some will be provided by in-app purchases of digital and physical goods. Some of the revenue will come from advertising and promotion. Other revenue will be generated by app sales (software purchases). 


Some of those shifts will affect the way PCs are designed and used, more than the others. Kip Cassino, Borrell and Associates EVP argues that by 2016, most computers available to consumers are going to look and act just like today’s iPhones and iPads. That means they will be able to communicate like cell phones, they will all have built-in GPS, and they will feature cameras and touch-screen interfaces. 


Most importantly, Cassino argues, they will depend on apps instead of expensive, bundled software  In fact, what we now call computers will have largely faded from the scene, except for some business and gaming applications. Personal computers will be replaced by mobile devices of one sort or another, Cassino argues. 


You don't have to agree with the time frame to agree with the direction of the user experience Cassino describes. 

Windstream, Frontier Make More Money from Business Customers than Consumers

Windstream Corp. defines itself as "a leading provider of advanced network communications, including cloud computing and managed services, to businesses nationwide. 

Frontier Communications says it is "a provider of  voice, broadband, satellite video, wireless Internet data access, data security solutions, bundled offerings, specialized bundles for small businesses and home offices, and advanced business communications for medium and large businesses in 27 states."

What you might say about those statements is that they are as much "aspirational" as a description of where each firm gets most of its revenue right now. 

At December 31, 2011, Frontier had 3,103,800 residential customers and 309,900 business customers. 

Business revenue tells the story, though. For the six-month period ending Dec. 31, 2011, Frontier earned $692 million in business customer revenue, and $544 million in consumer revenue.  

For Windstream, results were even more pronounced. Business revenue in the fourth quarter of 2011 were $888 million, while consumer revenues were $118 million. 

That is not to say a "typical" independent or rural telco will have an opportunity to create that sort of revenue distribution. Both Frontier and Windstream benefit from a presence in some mid-sized markets as well as rural areas, so the opportunity to sell services to businesses is greater. 

But results at both firms show a strategy that will work for the larger independents, namely an out-of-region emphasis on business customers and revenue, compared to in-region customers. 

India Will be World's 2nd-Largest Mobile Broadband Market in 2016

India will become the world’s second largest mobile broadband market within next four years with 367 million mobile broadband connections, second only to China, which will have 639 million mobile broadband subscriptions in service, the GSMA predicts:


The U.S. market, in contrast will have 337 million mobile broadband connections by 2016. 


Mobile broadband connections currently stand at a bit more than 10 million HSPA connections across the country. That number is expected to grow by 900 percent to 100 million connections in 2014. 



Tablets are a new factor in some markets. So is Long Term Evolution, though not in the Indian market.

Is Skype a Service, App or Feature?

According to Reuters,  Facebook and Google separately are considering some form of deals with Skype.


Facebook apparently has had preliminary discussions about buying Skype, while Google is said to be considering a joint venture. 


Not to be silly, but is Skype a "service," a "product" or a "feature?" To be sure, Skype generates something on the order of $900 million in revenue, the last time we had access to published information, in 2010. At that revenue run rate, Skype said it lost a bit of money, though, so it is a "revenue neutral" business, in a literal way, or at least used to be. 


That isn't to say all consumer "VoIP" services or business IP telephony services have similar issues. 

VoIP will continue to expand at double-digit rates in 2012 followed by high single-digit gains, averaging 9.4 percent on a compound annual basis for the forecast period to $18.9 billion, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association. 

Still, to keep matters in perspective, "legacy" circuit-switched voice revenue, though declining at a 1.5 percent compound annual rate through 2015, still will represent, in 2015, a $127 billion revenue stream. VoIP will amount to about $19 billion in 2015.

In other words, as a revenue source, legacy voice is seven times bigger than VoIP.

That is not to deny the importance of VoIP in the consumer market. In 2012, VoIP access lines will be about 49 percent as large as circuit-switched lines, for example, suggesting that perhaps 58 million VoIP lines are in service. But the notable point is that VoIP does not represent all that much revenue, in an overall sense.

In 2015, declining circuit-switched voice will still represent an order of magnitude more revenue than VoIP.

In contrast, fixed network broadband access services will amount to about $46 billion in annual revenue by 2015. Entertainment video will contribute about $14 billion in annual revenue in 2015.

So VoIP will be a bigger revenue stream than entertainment television, but not by much. In 2015, legacy voice still will be the single most-important revenue stream for fixed-line service providers, by far, even though it is declining.

Skype revenue might or might not actually create earnings. 

Sprint Announces HTC Evo 4G LTE

Sprint just officially announced the HTC EVO 4G LTE, which is a variation of the HTC One. It features "speed and feed" advancements, but most users might not care about that, so much as the bigger screen, which measures 4.7 inches.

The new EVO also comes with a new Sprint service called HD Voice, a MicroSD slot and a 1.5-Ghz dual-core Qualcomm chip. Speeds and feeds get too much attention. If you have used the Sprint Evo, you know the kickstand is a big deal. Only now it will be red, and easier to see.

Seriously, the kickstand is really useful.

34% of U.S. Teens Own an iPhone; 40% Will Buy One in Next 6 Months

You probably won't be surprised to learn how popular the Apple iPhone is in the teenager demographic. About 34 percent of U.S. teenagers already own an iPhone, while 40 percent of those who don’t own an iPhone are expecting to buy one in the next six months, a new survey by Piper Jaffray suggests.


Piper Jaffray polled 5,600 American teenagers, which finds continued, rising interest for the device in the high-school demographic. 


The percentage of teens who own an iPhone rose to 34 percent from 23 percent in fall 2011, and 17 percent in spring 2011. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who hope to own one rose from 38 percent and 37 percent during the same time periods. 



Some 20 percent of U.S. mobile phone owners now describe their phone as an Android device, up from 15 percent in May 2011, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. 
Some 19 percent of mobile phone owners now describe their phone as an iPhone, up from 10 percent in May 2011,  according to Pew. 

LightSquared Mulls Bankruptcy

LightSquared is "seriously considering" filing a voluntary bankruptcy,  Reuters reports. That would appear to be a new position, since Chairman Philip Falcone had been insisting he would try to revive the company, in part by litigating the Federal Communications Commission's refusal to approve its petition for re-purposing satellite spectrum to build a terrestrial Long Term Evolution fourth generation mobile network. 


The new stance could be the result of pressure from major stakeholders, especially creditors, who are themselves threatening to file bankruptcy claims. 


Voluntary bankruptcy has frequently been a business strategy in the telecommunications business over the last decade or so, allowing firms to stave off creditors, erase debt and start over. The principal asset LightSquared would continue to own is its spectrum, even though the FCC has concluded that use of much of that spectrum to support a terrestrial mobile network would pose unacceptable interference with GPS service, aeronautical communications and military communications. 


At least near term, the biggest beneficiaries would seem to be the largest U.S. mobile service providers, who will not have to face a new LTE network operating on a wholesale-only basis, enabling many new competitors into the 4G market. 


But Clearwire, itself a major wholesale provider of 4G service, should be positioned to pick up many of the wholesale deals LightSquared had gotten, and now has lost. 

Little Innovation in Global Mobile Handset Business?

Some might argue there has been a slowdown in mobile device and application innovation over the last year or so. Whether, in most years, it is possible to point to huge breakthroughs, is an arguable point. 


But an inability to point to a single big innovation does not mean change is lacking. A sharp change in the installed base of Android and Symbian devices might indicate only a change in potential innovation, not innovation itself.  


But the explosive growth of the tablet market might be a clearer indication of innovation. True, we have been talking for some time about the smart phone as representing the next big wave of personal computing. 


We are talking about the "post-PC" era of computing, sometimes in reference to mobiles, sometimes in reference to tablets. Those changes likewise might be viewed more as "enablers" of innovation, rather than direct instances of innovation. Others would disagree, arguing that device adoption is itself a significant innovation. 


At least some of us would dispute the notion that there has been "little" innovation in mobile devices and apps over the last year. Some would argue that truly-important innovations take time to gain mass market adoption. In fact, really-important changes should be measured in decades, rather than years. 





Still, much of the innovation some expect will come in the area of user interfaces, moving beyond "touch" to include voice recognition and gesture recognition, for example. 

Mobile Business Finally Moving Beyond "Feeds and Speeds?"

The telecom industry is turning away from an emphasis on “speeds and feeds” to focus on customer experience, says Jean Foster, NeuStar VP. In many ways, that is parallel to a similar change PC suppliers have had to make over the last 10 years, when the value of raw computing power ceased to be as important as many had believed.


Foster notes that, at Mobile World Congress in 2011, the show buzz was all about fourth generation networks (4G) and Long Term Evolution. In 2012, there was a much-greater focus on the experiences mobile networks can offer. 


That's a significant change. From a marketing standpoint, it means more attention will be paid to what a 4G network means for users, other than "faster" access. For an industry that worries rightly about becoming a commodity supplier of simple "access" services, that is a useful change.

Over 1 million U.S. cable subscribers cut cord in 2011

According to Convergence Consulting,  2.65 million American multi-channel video service subscribers abandoned their video service between 2008 and 2011 and switched to over-the-top services such as Netflix.< By way of contrast, from 2000 to 2009 cable operators and satellite video providers added an average of around two million subscribers a year.

The report says that only 112,000 cable, satellite and telco TV service subscriptions were added in the United States in 2011, less than a third of the 380,000 added subscriptions that Leichtman Research Group reported in March 2012. 

What Would Your Business Look Like if the Key Constraint Became "Free?"

Though it might at one point have seemed ludicrous to imagine building a business on the backs of an assumption that computing hardware or bandwidth would someday be essentially "free," that has been a fundamental precondition for businesses ranging from Microsoft to Netflix to Google.

Computing power, alone, does not define the present, or the future. But it is helpful to remember that overcoming "impossible" business conditions can be imagined, and can be used to build huge new businesses.

Moore's Law allowed a young Bill Gates to imaging what his software business would look like if "hardware were free." Netflix assumed something similar would happen with consumer bandwidth, allowing Netflix to build a business of streaming entertainment video.

These days, other companies, including Netflix, have looked at Moore's Law and tried to imagine what their businesses would look like if "bandwidth were free." The point, by the way, is not that the inputs actually are "free," only that the inputs stop being barriers.

Smart engineers once believed it was "impossible to squeeze all the information contained in today's high-definition TV signal into just six megahertz of bandwidth. It once was thought impossible to load 40 channels of standard-definition video onto an analog laser. None of those feats are unusual today.

The point is that, at least where Moore's Law can be brought to bear, business leaders need to envision what is possible if some currently expensive barrier disappears.

The first semiconductor devices appeared 42 years ago. If we compare the evolution rate of the chip to that of the earwig, we get a ratio of 0.0000000097:1. That is, for every year it took to evolve the bug, it took a ninety seven hundred billionth of a year to evolve its electronic intelligence partner. If this rate continues, we’ll see chips as intelligent as we are within a decade, by 2023.

What would a world where devices are as smart as we are look like? It is impossible to envision any more than our great-grandparents could foresee the impact of plastics, automobiles, or airplanes. We are chained to the attitudes and realities of our past. Psychologists tell us that less than 1 person in 10,000 can foresee a future that’s very different than at present.

Not to be a Pessimist, but is "Cloud" UC an Admission of Defeat?

"Cloud-based" Unified Communications as a service now seems to be supplanting "collaboration" as the term of art for unified communications. Of course, every time the industry does that, it raises questions about whether the new buzzwords are mostly an attempt to refresh up and re-spin the argument for older products that simply haven't gotten the traction supporters would prefer to have seen.

That is not to say UC or hosted IP telephony or even IP phone systems are unimportant, especially for some niche suppliers in the broader communications business.

It is to note that, despite all the effort, UC and hosted IP telephony revenue remains at levels that make them "niche" products suited to some providers, but not really a big deal for any tier-one service provider. And that status virtually guarantees there will be little in the way of tier-one marketing push for the services, for simple reasons: the financial payback simply is not there.

According to the Telecommunications Industry Association, for example, the global telecom business represents about $4.7 trillion worth of revenue, globally, of which perhaps 46 percent represents service provider revenues earned from end users, either business or consumers.

The balance of revenue includes end user gear, software and services that complement or support communications functions provided either by network service providers or enterprises. So you might say direct service provider revenues are about $2.1 trillion.

In the United States, unified communications will represent about $1.7 billion worth of revenue. VoIP, including both the dominant consumer revenues and a smaller amount of business revenue, will represent about $14.6 billion.

By 2015, analysts at Gartner forecast, shows the IP voice-as-a-service in North America might reach $2.2 billion. The market obviously is much smaller than that at the moment.


That isn't to say hosted IP telephony, or cloud-based voice, are not driving a significant amount of access revenue. In fact, now, and by 2015, access revenue (SIP trunking, for example) will drive more revenue than hosted PBX services do.

Is hosted IP telephony the next generation of "Centrex?"  If so, that might be an admission that, after a decade of missionary work and evangelizing, unified communications and hosted IP telephony have failed to make much of an impression on business communications buyers.

Fiber Glut Redux?

You can draw your own conclusions about whether a higher tempo of optical capacity investments is a "bubble" or simply a prudent response to fast-growing demand, or something more nuanced. Once again, it is likely a bit of both will happen.

Excess capacity will be installed on routes that won't prove to "need" the capacity, while some of the capacity will be built at locations where it really does represent a good business case. But, as always happens, there will be over-investment on some routes.

The Wall Street Journal discussion settles none of the questions, but raises the "right" issues about substantial new demand, the importance of "location" and the "competition" from improved laser technology that could jeopardize the new cables and fibers.