Netherlands Spectrum Auction Raises "Overpayment" Issue, Again

As you might expect, most of the new 4G spectrum that recently was won in the Netherlands spectrum auction were the biggest mobile service providers in the Netherlands. That happened despite restrictions on how much new spectrum the leading mobile service providers could acquire. 

In the auction, two spectrum blocks in the 800 megahertz band and one in the 900 MHz band will be reserved for new entrants. That was the provision that allowed Swedish mobile operator Tele-2 to secure 20 megahertz of spectrum in the 800 MHz band. 

Vodafone and KPN spent the most, with T-Mobile spending about 66 percent of what Vodafone and KPN invested. Tele-2 spent about 12 percent of what Vodafone and KPN spent, but also acquired a modest chunk of the new spectrum.

KPN has about 47 percent market share , while Vodafone has about 29 percent and T-Mobile has about 24 percent. Tele-2, a Swedish operator, also is entering the market. 

The 3.8 billion euros ($4.97 billion) proceeds were much higher than observers anticipated, far surpassing  the EUR400-500 million the government had expected.

That might have implications for spectrum auctions elsewhere in Europe,  In the United Kingdom,  4G spectrum auctions will be available in the first half of 2013, for example. 

KPN argues it won “a better package than Vodafone”, having picked up about 30 megahertz more spectrum than Vodafone acquired, the Financial Times reports. 

Auction results

Frequency Band	800	900	1800	2100	1900	2600
KPN	2x10	2x10	2x20	2x5		30
Vodafone	2x10	2x10	2x20	2x5
T-Mobile		2x15	2x30		4,9+9,7	25
Tele2	2x10

Vodafone spent 1,380,800,000 euro (1.381 billion); KPN 1,351,852,000 euros (1.352 billion);
T-Mobile 910,681,000 euro (910.8 million) and Tele2 euro 160,813,000 (160.8 million). 

Whether spectrum caps actually work is debatable, though policymakers are fond of the concept as a way to "stimulate competition" in the mobile market. In the recent Netherlands instance, one new operator was enticed to enter the market, but the overwhelming amount of new spectrum was won by the three firms that already lead the Netherlands market. 

One might argue that either spectrum caps or set-aside policies to encourage new entrants "work" as a matter of prudent public policy. In other words, "it sounds good." Whether they actually are beneficial in the long run is probably a bigger issue. Over time, market consolidate. 

Whether a small spectrum holding ultimately benefits consumers, or only enriches investors in the new firms, is a matter of debate. Some might even argue consumers do not benefit in the short term. 

It would be hard to make the argument that spectrum policies aimed at promoting new entrants have done anything to stop concentration in the U.S. mobile industry, for example. 

On a more prosaic level, European mobile service provider executives might now start to worry about what new Long Term Evolution spectrum might wind up costing, across the continent. Mobile service providers have been through ruinous spectrum wars before, precisely caused by the bidding for 3G licenses that nearly bankrupted a number of major European service providers. 

If the Netherlands prices are replicated elsewhere, that danger is emerging again. If so, we might someday find out that the real "winners" of the upcoming LTE 4G auctions were the firms that "lost" the spectrum auction.

Global Internet Users Doubled in 6 Years

Developing nations will become the focus of broadband growth over the next decade or two, building on a substantial amount of growth since about 2005.

By the end of 2011 2.3 billion people (around a third the world’s population) accessed the internet globally, almost double the 1.2 billion figure recorded in 2006, according to Ofcom.

Over this period growth in internet use was fastest among developing countries, and by 2011 62 percent of Internet users were located in developing countries, an increase from 44 percent in 2006.

And 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.

In significant part, that expansion will be driven by economic growth of middle classes most everywhere in the developing world over the next 15-20 years, according to the National Intelligence Council.

India, China and the rest of Asia provide important examples, as those regions will far outstrip the share of middle class consumption in the United States, Japan and European Union, for example.

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.

IDC, for example,  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. Regionally, Asia-Pacific (exclusive of China and India) was cited by compared to 61 percent of survey respondents as the region most likely to lead revenue growth.

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.

In Indonesia, for example, there are around 55 million internet users. But that’s just a tiny fraction (22 percent) of its 245 million population. But growth is going to be rapid. The number of internet users grew 29 percent in the most recent year.

Predictions point to 76 million users by 2015. Perhaps ironically, the majority of Internet users are accessing the web while on the go, and not from a desk. While mobile penetration is at 54 percent, PC penetration is just five percent.

In Vietnam, 2012 information technology spending will have increased by 19 percent, IDC says.
By 2015, about 45 percent of the population will be using the Internet by 2015, up from about 30 percent in 2012.

IDC is expects 15 percent year-over-year growth of information technology and communications spending in Myanmar in 2012. Internet usage is quite low, probably in low single digits, while mobile penetration rates likely are similar.

"IP Transition:" Turning Off PSTN by Another Name

There is a very-practical reason why discussion of a transition to IP technology, and an end to time division multiplex technology, is accelerating in the U.S. market and policy community.

If you look at services with growing revenue, those services are on networks using Internet Protocol. If you look at services whose revenues are declining or peaking, those services are on the legacy time division multiplex network.

Simply, customers are deserting the older networks in favor of mobile and broadband alternatives that are IP-based. And that means revenues are declining on networks with high fixed costs.

At some point, there will be so few customers left on the older networks that they cannot be supported any longer, especially when all legacy services can be delivered using the new IP networks.
Nor is the IP transition “just” a U.S. problem. Mobile broadband supplied by the mobile IP network now is driving revenue growth, while voice revenues on TDM networks are declining at serious rates in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2011, a study by Ofcom, the United Kingdom communications regulator, finds. 

Fixed voice revenues fell, collectively, by an average of 7.3 percent in 2011, compared to a 7.1 percent decrease in 2010.

Fixed voice revenues fell in all 17 countries in 2011, the fastest rates of decline being found in the BRIC countries, with revenues falling by 17.8 percent in China and 15.3 percent in India during the year. Among the non-BRIC countries, the annual declines in revenue were highest in Poland (13.3 percent) and France (13.1 percent). That’s the legacy network.

In contrast, mobile data has seen the fastest growth rate, with a compound annual growth rate of 25.4 percent between 2006 and 2011. That’s one of the newer IP networks.

The IP transition for the whole U.S. communications business is getting new attention as the Federal Communications Commission launches a new effort to plan for an end to the time division multiplex “public switched telephone network.”

"The Technology Transitions Policy Task Force will play a critical role in answering the fundamental policy question for communications in the 21st century: In a broadband world, how can we best ensure that our nation's communications policies continue to drive a virtuous cycle of innovation and investment, promote competition, and protect consumers?" said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

The effort will face lots of political pressure from lots of vested interests whose business interests might be helped or harmed in any transition. But the transition has to happen. Voice, the specific service the TDM network was built to deliver, cannot support the network, long term.

Fixed voice still represents 25 percent of total service provider revenue in the 17 countries, Ofcom reports. But only a quarter of total revenues. And those revenues steadily are declining.

Fixed voice revenues fell by 5.2 percent in the United Kingdom during 2011, a higher rate that the 3.3 percent average in the five years to 2011.

Significant declines in voice pricing are largely to blame. The fastest rates of fixed voice pricing decline being found in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China)  countries, with revenues falling by 17.8 percent in China and 15.3 percent in India . Among the non-BRIC countries, the annual falls in revenue were highest in Poland (13.3 percent) and France (13.1 percent).

But consumers also are abandoning use of fixed network voice, as well. The total number of fixed lines among the 17 countries fell by four percent to 767 million in 2011. The number of lines fell in all of these countries (except Brazil and the U.K.), where the number of lines increased by two percent and 0.2 percent respectively.

Fixed voice call volumes also fell in all of the countries for which figures were available in 2011, except France.


The logical response, for any executive facing that sort of revenue erosion would be to “cut costs.” The problem is that some service providers already have cut significantly, and some costs cannot be cut, due to pension obligations, union rules, contracts or government edicts.

At some point, no amount of additional cost cutting will compensate for falling revenues. Shutting down the TDM networks won’t necessarily fix the voice revenue problem. But all the future services will require the IP network, so whatever happens to the voice business, IP can provide it at lower cost.

And lower cost now matters, as most voice and even broadband access are migrating to the mobile networks. That means less potential revenue to support even the IP fixed network.

In fact, so fast are mobile high-speed access revenues growing that, for the first time in 2011, overall mobile data revenues exceeded fixed broadband revenue in the 17 countries.

In fact, the salience of mobility is a relatively new form of pressure. The countries where the highest proportion of calls originated on mobiles in 2011 were China (97 percent), the United States (82 percent) and Poland (81 percent), the Ofcom study reports.

As always, the transition discussions and policies will be contentious and highly political, since many contestants stand to lose or gain a great deal, depending on how and when the transition happens.

Philippines Gmessage a Test of Carrier Instant Messaging Success

Globe Telecom, the second biggest carrier in the Philippines, is about to find out how important network effects are for instant messaging users. 

Globe Telecom is launching its own instant messaging service, with one key attribute: messages can be sent to people who do not use Gmessage. The new service has tough competition, including Facebook and Whatsapp, for example.


At least in part, Globe Telecom is responding to declining text messaging usage, and growing use of instant messaging platforms as an alternative. 

Instant messaging is quite popular in Asia. But the markets remain fragmented.  In China, the top instant messaging applications are Imo.im and Chatroulette. Imo.im reaches 3.7 percent of the users with 6.5 percent of all page views and Chatroulette reaches 1.7 percent of the users with 1.3 percent of all page views.

Line, which has grown to 60 million users, mostly in Asia including at least 29 million in Japan.

Also popular is Kakao Talk with 60 million users, more than half in South Korea where it originates. 

Other messenging apps include Nimbuzz, which has amassed 100 million users including 31 million in Asia, and WeChat by China-based Tencent, which is nearing 200 million users.



Globe’s Gmessage is potentially significant for a few reasons. Number one is that mobile messaging services are popular in Asia, and that is hurting text messaging revenue. 

In South Korea, KakaoTalk has more than 60 million users, and LINE is enjoying similar popularity in Japan. In China, Weixin – or WeChat, in English – has more than 200 million users. 

Alongside WhatsApp, all three are intent on expanding in the Southeast Asian markets. So Globe Telecom is fighting back with an offer of its own. 

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.