U.S., Canada are Least Concentrated Broadband Markets

Many observers complain about the dominance of cable companies and telcos in the fixed network high-speed access market, but a new analysis by Ofcom, the United Kingdom communications regulator, suggest the United States and Canada have the least concentrated markets among 13 examined by Ofcom.

When the combined retail customer market share of the three largest broadband providers in each country is used as a measure of market concentration, and across the 13 countries for which figures are available, the average share of the largest three providers increased from 64.1 percent to 65.2 percent in 2011.

In the five years to 2011 the change in the combined connection share of the three largest providers in each country ranged from a 20.9 percentage point fall in Poland to a 16.2 percentage point increase in Ireland.

The most concentrated broadband market at the end of 2011 was France (where the largest providers (Orange, Free and SFR/Neuf) accounted for 86 percent of connections), followed by Ireland at 85 percent.

Excluding the United States and Canada (where infrastructure-based competition between local incumbent telecoms providers and cable operators makes the share of the largest three operators a less useful measure of competition) the least concentrated broadband market among our comparator countries was in Poland, where the three largest providers’ combined market share was 57 percent.

That structural difference between North American fixed broadband markets, and those of most other countries, where only a single broadband network exists, also suggests why the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is less concerned than regulators elsewhere about mandatory wholesale access obligations and prices.

While it is far from perfect, robust competition between cable operators and telcos provides a workable level of competition without mandatory access obligations and price control.

The other structural consideration is that, in the continental-sized U.S. market, for example, service providers in both cable and telco industries are prevented from becoming too large. Roughly speaking, no single service provider is allowed to gain more than about 30 percent of total market share.

That necessarily means a larger number of significant providers, on a national level. Still, the Ofcom analysis is significant. Using informal tests of market concentration across more than a dozen nations, the U.S. and Canadian markets are the least concentrated.

Demand and Supply are Issues for 1-Gbps Internet Access

It is easy to criticize big Internet access providers for arguing there is little to no demand for symmetrical 1-Gbps high-speed access services of the type Google Fiber is providing in Kansas City, Mo. and Kansas City, Kan. It comes off as an attempt to downplay the significance of a competitor's offering.

At least in part, such statements often are "jawboning" efforts to shape opinion. But there are other legitimate aspects as well. Consumers in some markets who can buy 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps or faster services, often have shown they are willing to buy slower-speed services. 

The other practical problem is that the rest of the Internet is not yet optimized for 1-Gbps speeds. Consider a recent test of Internet service provider access speeds for Netflix video streams. 

Without question, Google Fiber was the most consistently fast ISP in America for watching Netflix streamed content, according to Netflix. 

But keep it in perspective: Netflix streaming only happens so fast, on a 1-Gbps or much slower connections. In other words, a few consumers might want 1-Gbps like they want other products: for "bragging rights." 

In practice, a faster access pipe will always be bound by all the other access pipes, servers and backbone transit routes and equipment in between any two connections. Upgrading just one link doesn't actually provide that much value. It simply shifts the bottleneck elsewhere.

63% of Mobile Video Consumption Happens at Home

Fully 63 percent of digital video screening on mobile phones does not happen on-the-go, but rather at home, a study conducted on behalf of  the  Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has found. 

Some 36 percent of these home-based digital video activities happen in a room where a second screen also is present (television, PC or tablet), IAB says. 

This is perhaps the inkling of a future shift in the mobile video medium. 

Initially, the thinking was that people would watch bits of video in "interstitial" time, between other activities, or while waiting at a bus stop, for example. Also, the general thinking was that people would naturally want to use the biggest available screen.

The IAB findings tend to refute the notion that mobile video is something consumers use haphazardly,  at odd times of the day, when they have nothing else going on and no other screen available. 

That might suggest users have a preference for the mobile experience even when they are stationary and have other screens available, and that a distinct "fourth screen experience" is developing, with potential attributes different from television, PC and tablet video consumption. In fact, use of a phone to watch video when other screens readily are available suggests there is something about mobile viewing that users see as "better" than viewing on a larger screen, for whatever reason.


Mobile video usage also appears to taking on some of the patterns of traditional television consumption, with a "prime time" period in the evening.  About 22 percent of video interactions were purposefully planned, while 18 percent of views were "because I was bored" motivations, and only three percent of mobile viewing happened because no other screen was available.

On the other hand, the study also shows that short form content remains the driver for mobile viewing.  The most-frequently-viewed genres in mobile video included music videos (45 percent), movie trailers (42 percent), tutorials/How-To's (41 percent) and funny short video clips (37 percent).

Humorous short clips (66 percent) and music videos (52 percent) are the most likely to be shared. And it is that sharing that is shaping up as a distinctive feature of the mobile video experience.

The findings continue to suggest that short form content is best suited to mobile consumption, or at least that is what consumers choose to do, at the moment. Where people are watching (at home), what they are watching (short form content), when they are watching (prime time) and why they are not using a larger screen are relevant observations. 

It remains possible that many mobile viewers do not use a larger screen, even when it is available, for some technology reason (TV doesn't have Internet connection), because others are using the other screens at the moment or simply because they prefer the mobile experience. 

Nor does the study shed much light on a related, but different issue, namely whether users would choose to view long-form content on a mobile screen when other screens are available, and whether the type of content to be viewed makes a difference. In other words, it is conceivable a single person watching news would choose to view on a tablet, but that same person might prefer to watch a high-definition movie on the biggest screen, especially when it is a shared experience. 

The IAB study does not address those other questions. 

Consumer "Media" Preferences are Shifting

If, over the last four years, consumers have consistently spent less time with television, radio and print media, while steadily spending more time consuming media on mobile devices, what would that tell you?

True, we haven't yet seen significant shifts in revenue for video entertainment services, and one might argue that advertising revenues related to media consumption have not yet budged much, either. 

But, sooner or later, advertising follows audience attention. 

Mobile Broadband Became Majority of Access in G-20 Countries in 5 Years

It sometimes is hard to comprehend just how fast trends related to the Internet can change. 

Consider that, in the G-20 countries, mobile broadband went from negligible to a majority of all access connections in just five years, between 2005 and 2010. 

In five more years, in 2015, mobile G-20 Internet connections will be about 80 percent of all connecttions, Business Insider estimates.

Middle Class Will Explode Globally, So Will Use of Broadband Internet

Middle classes most everywhere in the developing world are poised to expand substantially in terms of both absolute numbers and the percentage of the population that can claim middle class status during the next 15-20 years, according to the National Intelligence Council. 

That has huge implications for providers of communication services, especially Internet-related applications and services. India, China and the rest of Asia provide examples, as those regions will far outstrip the share of middle class consumption in the United States, Japan and European Union, for example. 

At the same time, the United States, European, and Japanese share of global income is projected to fall from 56 percent today to well under half by 2030.

Note the dramatic increase in economic growth the Council expects will happen between now and 2030. It took Britain 155 years to double gross domestic product per capita, The United States and Germany took between 30 and 60 years to do so.

India and China are doing this at a scale and pace  not seen before: 100 times the people than Britain and yet a doubling of GDP in one tenth the time. By 2030 Asia will be well on its way to returning to being the world’s powerhouse, just as it was before 1500, NIC analysts say.

Sub-Saharan Africa, rural India, and other traditionally isolated regions are being globally connected. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly rich sensor platforms, enabling nearly all communication mediated by technology to be tracked and analyzed at a fine level of detail.

More than 70 percent of the world’s population already has at least one mobile device; global mobile data traffic in 2010 was three times the size of the entire Internet in 2000.

By 2015, in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, more people will have mobile network access than with electricity at home.

As much as it has been a "problem" figuring how to ensure that billions of humans who "never have made a phone call" is a problem we have largely solved, the next challenge is assuring that those billions of people who do not presently use the Internet can do so.

The amount of change we will see will be breathtaking.

Samsung to Build Galaxy Note III with 6.3-Inch Screen?

The upcoming Galaxy Note III will feature a 6.3-inch screen using an OLED display, Korea Times reports. 

That is going to blur the line between the biggest-screen smart phones and the smallest-screen tablets even further. 

To be sure, some are skeptical about the new form factor. As with "tablets" themselves, many in the past have tried to create such a device, and largely failed. 

But ABI Research 208 million "phablets" will be shipped in 2015, globally. Of course, much could depend on how one defines a "phablet." ABI Research reserves that category for devices with phone functionality and a touch screen between 4.6 and 5.5 inches. 

That wouldn't be a phablet, that's just a smart phone, in my estimation. But users will decide. Somewhere between a seven-inch screen, the present low end of tablets, and five or so inches, the current high end of smart phone screens, is where the issue has to be decided. 

It may come down to how many users want a communicating tablet that is highly portable, versus users who want a Web-oriented phone. Some of us might harken back a few years, when the primary reason for using a smart phone was to get mobile email.

For some of us, there came a time when easy "Web" use became important, then more important than email, and that's when some of us might have decided it was time to ditch the BlackBerry. 

These days, though I find I expect my smart phone to work as a phone, more of the mission critical functionality continues to migrate to Web and apps, where a larger screen really makes a difference, and where one expects an app to work pretty much the same on the smart phone screen as it does on a larger-screen device. 

Portability is important, which is why some of us always thought a seven-inch tablet would be well received by a significant portion of the user base. These days, though, "device creep" can be an issue.

For many people who travel, for example, or who work outside the office, a tablet is a reasonable substitute for a notebook. That is not an option for some of us, who still wind up traveling with a notebook, one or two smart phones, then a tablet and an MP3 player (the smallest possible unit that can be clipped on running shorts). As always, the ability to ditch at least of those devices is helpful and valuable. 

That's a bit of a niche, but some of us still would say there is a market for smart phones with big screens, if only because of the growing importance of things we need to do with screens, as opposed to "phones."

US Won't ratify UN Internet Treaty

The United States said Thursday that it will not ratify a United Nations telecommunications treaty after raising concerns that it would disrupt the current governance structure of the Internet and open the door for online censorship.





The U.K. and Canada also said they would not ratify the treaty after negotiations ended at a conference hosted by the U.N. International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Dubai.

TechNet, TechAmerica, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and The Internet Association argued that the ITU should be excluded from decisions regarding the governance of the Internet. 

India to Launch Major Cable TV-Based Broadband Initiative?

Of India's 100 million Internet users, about 12.5 million have broadband. India's government seems to want to change that, and seems to want to rely on cable TV networks that already reach about 90 million Indian households, Businessweek reports.

A new telecom policy that would ease foreign investment rules for cable TV providers of broadband access seeks to boost the number of broadband connections to 175 million, by 2017, reaching 600 million by 2020.

The new policy might not have immediate implications for rural broadband, though. Right now there are about 260,000 broadband connections in rural India, though 800 million people live in those rural areas, including at least 600,000 villages. 

One has to assume wireless is key to any future progress, as the cost of  building a kilometer of fixed network plant costs about $60,000 to $70,000. Those costs have tended in the past to encourage experiments with kiosks  and other methods of getting connectivity to a village. 

Separately, the Indian government is building a $4.5 billion National Optic Fiber Network (NOFN), to take broadband connectivity to the villages by 2014. But some earlier efforts have failed. 

Called Bharat Broadband, the project will connect 250,000 self-governing bodies at the village level across the country. 

Though Indian rural Internet access might be as low as two percent of households at the moment, we should expect to see enormous changes over the next 10 years.

The number of users is expected to climb from 120 million to 350 million by 2015, for example,  according to McKinsey, largely in urban areas, as you would expect. 

According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India and Indian Market Research Bureau there are 38 million people in rural India who have used the Internet at least once in their life, and this number is expected to reach 45 million by December 2012.

That would boost rural India Internet penetration  has grown from 2.6 percent in 2010 to 4.6 percent in 2012. 

At least 90 percent of Indian villages have inadequate communications facilities, according ot the World Bank. "With few exceptions, their telecommunications connection to the outside world amounts to one public telephone," the World Bank has said. 

Sprint Seeks to Buy Rest of Clearwire for $2.1 Billion

Sprint Nextel Corp. has offered $2.90 per share of Clearwire Corp. as part of its effort to acquire the roughly half of Clearwire it does not already own, Bloomberg reports. 

The $2.1 billion bid is among the most-significant early developments since the Softbank purchase of Sprint for about $70 billion. 

Many observers might speculate that Sprint needs better control over the Clearwire assets if it fact it plans to launch a disruptive attack on the U.S. mobile market, as Softbank itself did in Japan. 

Data services are likely to be the focal point for any such effort, for obvious reasons. Voice and messaging services are a declining source of revenue for most providers, and Softbank already earns perhaps 66 percent of its Japanese revenue from data services. 

Add in the possibility of enticing consumers to buy subscriptions for tablets and other devices and ultimate mobile data penetration of three hundred to five hundred percent is conceivable, a claim Verizon Wireless itself made years ago, referring to machine-to-machine services as an example. 

It already is clear that Softbank has vaulted into the top ranks of global mobile service providers, measured either by subscribers or revenue. 


Some believe, based on past evidence, that Softbank will try to disrupt the U.S. mobile market, probably using pricing in some way. 

The reason for thinking Softbank will launch a pricing war, or perhaps better stated, a “value-price” war, is that it was what Softbank did earlier in the Japanese market. 

That might lead some observers to speculate about whether the Softbank-owned Sprint will try to become the “Free Mobile” of the U.S. market.In France, the Illiad-owned “Free Mobile” has disrupted the French mobile market. 

Already, FreedomPop is trying to disrupt mobile broadband pricing, as the Illiad Free Mobile effort already has done in the French mobile market.

In 2006, when Softbank decided to buy Vodafone KK assets, it likewise was criticized in some quarters for undertaking a risky gambit.

Some will argue Softbank is taking another huge risk by entering a country where iit has no previous operating experience, and by assuming a huge new debt load, after only recently shedding a similar debt load.

Softbank argues it is a reasonable risk, and that its prior experience taking on NTT Docomo and KDDI show it can compete in a market dominated by larger service providers.

Softbank, many believe, will use the same strategy it used in Japan, which some would describe as providing a large number of complementary features or services to create a “sticky” relationship with the end user.

Others will point to the pricing strategy. In Japan, Softbank’s 2006 acquisition of the Vodafone unit was not universally considered wise. 

But in just one year, Softbank managed to boost its subscriber base from 700,000 in fiscal 2006 to 2.7 million. By the beginning of 2008, Softbank had grabbed 44 percent of Japan’s new mobile subscribers, well ahead of KDDI’s 35 percent and NTT-DoCoMo’s 11 percent.

Some think Softbank will be willing to launch a price war, as well. 

In Japan, Softbank was willing to sacrifice voice average revenue per unit to make market share gains.Back in the 2006 to 2008 period, Softbank was willing to accept a $13 a month ARPU decline to build market share.

Spectrum will among the assets Softbank will be able to leverage. Hence the presumed need for full control of Clearwire.

Between 2000 and 2010, Global Internet Users Grew 2-3 Orders of Magnitude, Globally

Growth of global Internet users of about eight percent on 2011 might not sound like too much, given the 2000 to 2010 rates of growth. After all, Internet users in Africa grew 2357 percent between 2000 and 2010. 

In Asia, growth was a more modest 622 percent. And global growth masks much-higher growth rates in some regions and areas. India's 2011 growth rate was 38 percent; Indonesia's growth rate was 22 percent; while in the Philippines Internet users grew 44 percent. 

 

The Mobile VoIP "Problem"

Analysts at Juniper Research now estimate there will be about one billion users of mobile VoIP apps and services by about 2017. 

For some, that is an opportunity, though the magnitude of the opportunity might be questionable. 

For mobile service providers, mobile VoIP is probably more a problem than an opportunity.

"As with Skype on the desktop, only a very small proportion will pay for the service," Juniper Research says.  “Wi-Fi mobile VoIP is potentially the most damaging of all VoIP traffic, as it bypasses the mobile networks altogether."

“We forecast that mobile VoIP over Wi-Fi will cost operators $5 billion globally by 2015,” says Anthony Cox, Juniper Research analyst.

In fact, a recent forecast by Visiongain suggests 2012 mobile VoIP revenues will reach only about $2.5 billion, globally. 

“Many subscriber sign up to an OTT service without ever planning to pay a cent for it, and some industry players do not have a short-term revenue model at all,” says Cox.


Still,  researchers at Analysys have in the past predicted that, as early as 2012, mobile VoIP services would generate revenues of $18.6 billion (EUR15.3 billion) in the United States and $7.3 billion (EUR.6.0 billion) in Western Europe, compared with fixed VoIP revenues of $11.9 (EUR9.8 billion) in the United States and $6.9 billion (EUR5.7 billion) in Western Europe.



It seems doubtful those levels of revenue have been realized, though. In fact, analysts seem to have overestimated the revenue mobile VoIP would represent, rather consistently. 

In fact, though fourth generation networks and Long Term Evolution virtually require that carriers embrace IP-based voice, the business model is less certain, and could "potentially accelerate the decline in overall voice revenues," says Cox.

The question is how fast new and alternate revenue streams, such as advertising or premium features and services, can gain acceptance.

Asia-Pacific Region Will Lead Service Provider Revenue Growth

Though Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have been leading economic and communications adoption growth for much of the past decade, it now appears that those nations are reaching maturity, and that growth of communications services will be lead by a new list of nations in the emerging markets.

Overall, that growth–on a percentage basis–will likely be lead by countries in the Asia-Pacific region, exclusive of China and India.

Globally, emerging markets remain crucial for global telecom service provider growth. IDC predicts that emerging markets will contribute for 53 percent of 2012’s global information and communications technology growth.

And a poll  of 675 global IT and business professionals suggests Indonesia, Vietnam, Qatar and Myanmar are the countries to lead that growth. But Israel, Iraq, Uganda and Cambodia were other countries also viewed as countries where growth could occur.

Notably, just five percent of respondents chose Brazil, Russia, India, China or South Africa as among the nations having the strongest growth, though the so-called BRICS nations have been at the top of global growth lists for some years.

Global Youth Can't Live Without Their Smart Phones

About 90 percent of Gen Y surveyed worldwide said they check their smart phones for updates in email, texts and social media sites, often before they get out of bed, according to the 2012 Cisco Connected World Technology Report. 

Global youth are remarkably consistent in those attitudes, as it turns out. 

FCC Approves Dish Network Long Term Evolution Plan

Federal Communications Commission members unanimously approved a plan to allow Dish Network Corp. to re-use its mobile satellite spectrum to build a new Long Term Evolution mobile network, one more example of how the U.S. mobile market is being challenged. 

All five FCC members have voted on the rules. Dish is required to build out at least 70 percent of the new network within six years, and will have to reserve some of its spectrum as a guard band to prevent interference with other licensed users, a problem LightSquared encountered as well. 

Dish has said that provision would be a "game changer" for Dish that would make the proposed LTE network "risky." 

Some observers have argued all along that Dish would simply sell its spectrum at some point, and not bother getting into the mobile business. Others are not so sure, given Dish's largely saturated video entertainment business and CEO Charlie Ergen's comments that, if he had to do it all over again, he might not choose satellite delivery as his way of attacking the video entertainment market.