Did British Telecom Inflate Rural Broadband Costs to Win Higher Subsidies?

The U.K. government is going to subsidize the national broadband network in rural areas by giving £1billion to BT to connect about 12 million households in the countryside. Half of the money is coming from the U.K. government, and half from local taxes.

However according to a leaked document purportedly from a briefing for officials at the Culture, Media and Sport department, one expert at least charges that BT is overcharging, using a mark up of up to 80 percent.

BT denies the charge, of course.

18% to 25% of U.S. Adults Now Own Tablets

Over the last year, tablet ownership has steadily increased from 11 percent of U.S. adults in July of 2011 to 18 percent in January of 2012, according to the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Currently, 22 percent own a tablet and another three percent regularly use a tablet owned by someone else in the home. A separate survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found 25 percent of all U.S. adults have a tablet computer.


The growth in tablet adoption is likely related to the advent of the lower-priced tablets in late 2011, Pew researchers believe. Overall, 68 percent of respondents got their tablet in the last year.

About 52 percent of tablet owners report owning an iPad, compared with 81 percent in the survey a year ago.

Android-based devices make up the bulk of the remaining tablet ownership, 48 percent overall, dominated largely by the Kindle Fire.

Some 21 percent own a Kindle Fire, eight percent own the Samsung Galaxy,

GoDaddy Exits SMB Cloud Computing Business

Web-hosting firm GoDaddy has been marketing cloud computing services to small and mid-sized businesses for a year or so, but has concluded that not enough SMBs are interested in the offer, at least the way GoDaddy had been offering the services.

As with other apparent market failures, it isn't always easy to conclude that "something cannot be done" because one particular supplier cannot do it. GoDaddy appears to have been offering simple data storage services. 

Some would say that will not work with SMB customers, who really need software as a service offers, not simple cloud storage. 

Service Provider Access Networks Will be Distributed Denial of Service Victims

Metaswitch Networks CEO John Lazar warns that service provider IP networks increasingly will be the target of distributed denial of service attacks. It looks like they already are such victims.

Millions of Internet users in Brazil have fallen victim to a sustained attack that exploited vulnerabilities in DSL modems, forcing people visiting sites such as Google or Facebook to reach imposter sites that installed malicious software and stole online banking credentials, a security researcher said.

U.K. to Hold 4G Spectrum Auction Sooner than Expected

Ofcom, the U.K., communications regulator, seems to have persuaded TV broadcasters, Digital UK and the transmission company Arqiva to release 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz spectrum for auction sooner than had originally been expected.

This agreements mean that the 4G auction process is on track to begin at the end of 2012, potentially enabling the licensing process for 4G services across the United Kingdom to begin during the first half of 2013, Ofcom says.

In August 2012 Ofcom gave approval to an application by Everything Everywhere (now EE) to use some of its existing spectrum to offer a 4G service. This is expected to launch this year.

Ofcom plans to start the auction process to release spectrum at the end of the year, with bidding starting early in 2013.

1983 Steve Jobs Predictions about Computing

It's pretty amazing.


He predicted that people will be spending more time interacting with personal computers than with cars. Remember he said this at a time when few people owned a computer. 

He talked about the personal computer being a new medium of communication, before extensive networking and and at a time when 300 baud modems were state of the art.

Jobs talks about early e-mail systems, and how, at some point, portable computers with radio links would allow people to walk around anywhere and pick up their e-mail. 

He says Apple’s strategy is to “put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes."

He thought that the software industry needed something like a radio station so that people could sample software before they buy it. 

He believed that software distribution through traditional brick-and-mortar was archaic since software is digital and can be transferred electronically through phone lines. He foresees paying for software in an automated fashion over the phone lines with credit cards.

Free Skype WiFi Has Retail Promotion Angle

Free Skype WiFi has been launched by Wicoms and Skype in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Businesses can purchase the service at skypewifi.wicoms.com.

Skype users can access any available Free Skype WiFi location using their Skype ID and the Skype WiFi app. If a user doesn’t have such an ID, there is a simple single step procedure that involves gaining access using an email address.

The upside for retail sponsors, aside from offering the amenity, might include the ability to supply instant offers,  coupons or other information to shoppers in the stores.

T-Mobile Looking at MetroPCS Buy?

Deutsche Telekom AG is nearing a deal to buyu MetroPCS Communications and create a public equity for the new company, Bloomberg reports. That would be a switch. T-Mobile USA earlier in 2012 had said it had “no need” of such an acquisition.

Deutsche Telekom is said to be considering a stock-swap deal with MetroPCS to would give Deutsche Telekom control over the combined U.S. entity. As a byproduct, such a public vehicle would allow Deutsche Telekom to gradually monetize its investment in T-Mobile USA, an original impetus for the decision to be acquired by AT&T.

Separately, Sprint had contemplated its own deal to buy MetroPCS. Either way, many observers expect a new round of mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. mobile industry.

Raymond James analyst  Ric Prentiss predicts that both Sprint and T-Mobile USA will engage in a rather furious wave of acquisitions in 2013 and 2014 to bulk up.

“We do think M&A in the U.S. wireless space will occur over the next 12 to 18 months," says Pentiss.

“We think the September 19 announcement of the new T- Mobile USA CEO hired externally and the $2.4 billion tower sale to Crown Castle on September 28 are strong indicators that T-Mobile USA, and its owner Deutsche Telekom, are not interested anytime soon in network sharing or merging with Sprint," Prentiss says.

"We believe T-Mobile is more likely a competing bidder against Sprint for smaller M&A deals that bring spectrum, cash flow, synergies, and the potential for public currency,” he says.

In EU, 4G Frustrates Apple Device Users

The European Union’s Commissioner For The Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes argues that the EU needs to invest about $64 billion in 4G networks, in the form of loans, to overcome current spectrum incompatibilities that affect use of Apple iPhone and iPad devices.

At the moment, both devices have only limited connectivity in the EU, where spectrum differences and, in some cases, no 4G networks, force the LTE-capable devices to use 3G connections.

There are larger issues. If Europe remains a region where LTE and 4G are "problems" for suppliers such as Apple, they won't drive their decisions by European concerns. 

Browser News Content Consumption Surges

There has been movement over the last year toward using the browser rather than apps for tablet news consumption, the Pew Research Center has found, despite the new popularity of mobile apps.

Fully 60 percent of tablet news users mainly use the browser to get news on their tablet, just 23 percent get news mostly through apps and 16 percent use both equally. In 2011, 40% got news mostly through a browser, 21 percent mostly through apps and 31 percent used both equally, the Pew Research Center says.

But as was revealed in the 2011 survey, app news users-and those who use both apps and the browser equally-remain in many ways more engaged and deeper news users than those who mostly use their browser. The browser is preferred on the smartphone as well (61 percent get news mostly through a browser, 28 percent mostly through apps and 11 percent use both equally).

60% of Mobile Users Research Purchases from Their Phones

Six out of 10 people who own a mobile device use it to research products, while an additional 44 percent use it to purchase goods, a research study published today by digital publisher SAY Media has found.

Users aged 18 to 24 do so at slightly-higher rates. Some 64 percent of users 18 to 24 research products from their mobiles and 58 percent purchase from their phones.



 

Mobile Consolidation is Coming in U.S. Market in 2013, 2014

Raymond James analyst  Ric Prentiss predicts that both Sprint and T-Mobile USA will engage in a rather furious wave of acquisitions in 2013 and 2014 to bulk up.

“We do think M&A in the U.S. wireless space will occur over the next 12 to 18 months," says Pentiss.

“We think the September 19 announcement of the new T- Mobile USA CEO hired externally and the $2.4 billion tower sale to Crown Castle on September 28 are strong indicators that T-Mobile USA, and its owner Deutsche Telekom, are not interested anytime soon in network sharing or merging with Sprint," Prentiss says. 

"We believe T-Mobile is more likely a competing bidder against Sprint for smaller M&A deals that bring spectrum, cash flow, synergies, and the potential for public currency,” he says. 

When Will Programming Costs Subside?

It's an almost certain bet that retail prices for video entertainment services will increase in price, virtually every year, driven, video entertainment service executives say, by ever-higher costs of programming. That doesn't mean immediate changes are coming in the video business. But observers would say a day of reckoning awaits. 

At 10 percent per year rates of growth, the $40 wholesale cost of goods sold today would more than double, to about $80, in another seven years," says Craig Moffett, Bernstein Research analyst.

With an average retail subscription price of about $80, you might assume the retail price is double the wholesale price, implying a $160 a month subscription price in seven years, should nothing else change. Some think that is unlikely. 

Ultrabooks Not Selling as Hoped, Globally

Global ultrabook shipments are falling short of expectations in 2012, according to IHS iSuppli. High prices are partly to blame, but also industry ability to cut through all the clutter around new devices. Tablets and smart phones are getting most of the attention, in okther words. 

An estimated 10.3 million ultrabooks will ship worldwide in 2012, according to IHS iSuppli.

That is a reduction from the previous forecast issued earlier this year of 22 million units. In the newly adjusted forecast for 2012, more than half of the shipments for the year are expected to come in the fourth quarter.

Along with the revised figures for 2012, shipments have also been modified for the next year, projected to rise to 44 million in 2013, down from the older outlook of 61 million.

“There once was a time when everyone knew the‘Dude you’re getting a Dell’ slogan. Nowadays no one can remember a tag line for a new PC product, including for any single ultrabook,” says Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS. 

“So far, the PC industry has failed to create the kind of buzz and excitement among consumers that is required to propel ultrabooks into the mainstream," says Stice.

Half of U.S. Adults Use Mobile Broadband

Half of all U.S. adults now have a mobile connection to the web using either a smart phone or tablet, significantly more than a year ago, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Economist Group.

Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults, 22 percent, now own a tablet device-double the number from a year earlier. 

Another three percent of adults regularly use a tablet owned by someone else in their home. And nearly a quarter of those who don't have a tablet, 23 percent, plan to get one in the next six months. 

Some 44 percent of U.S. adults have smart phones, up from 35 percent in May 2011, the Pew Center says.