LTE Roaming is at an Early Stage

Long Term Evolution roaming across nations and regions is not going to be easy for a couple of reasons. For starters, many service providers are only at the beginning of their LTE network builds. Rarely do mobile service providers get around to the nuances of international roaming until they have gotten the new networks built.  

Longer term, the issue is disparate frequencies. More than 40 different frequency bands are used by LTE providers globally. That means handsets need ability to use many different bands, a requirement that increases handset cost and carrier frequency planning.

But AT&T has become an early mover in LTE roaming, signing what many would say is the first-ever LTE roaming deal, with Rogers in Canada, in December 2013.

AT&T followed that agreement with a roaming deal with the U.K.’s EE, initially allowing AT&T LTE customers to roam on EE networks in the United Kingdom.

In February 2014, NTT Docomo and AT&T likewise signed a 4G roaming deal, allowing AT&T customers access to the NTT network when traveling in Japan.

Consider only the matter of differing frequencies used globally. In the United States, the 700 MHz, 850 MHz, 1.7 GHz 2.1 Ghz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands all are used for LTE service.

In Europe, the 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1.8 GHz, 1.9 GHz, 2.1 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands are used.

In the Asia-Pacific region, LTE uses the 450 MHz, 700 MHz, 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1.7 Ghz, 1.8 GHz, 1.9 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands.

AT&T Launches "Best Ever Pricing" on Family Plans

The latest quarterly reports issued by Verizon Communications and AT&T illustrate new strategic issues in the U.S. mobile business. Fundamentally, the issue is that the U.S. mobile market--in financial and subscriber terms--is bifurcating.

Verizon is pulling away from its other top three competitors--AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile US--and especially putting distance between itself and AT&T, the other firm in a position to lead the market.

In part, that also explains the different strategic choices apparently being made by Verizon, which is focusing on the core U.S. market, and AT&T, which virtually has to look overseas for growth.

For the moment, the key market structure issue appears to be whether AT&T can reignite subscriber growth in the U.S. market.

Verizon Wireless added 1.7 million retail net connections in the fourth quarter, including 1.6 million retail postpaid net connections.

Some 87 percent of new accounts in the fourth quarter of 2013 were phones, the balance being tablet and personal hot spot devices, for example. Compare that to AT&T’s results.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, AT&T added 566,000 new postpaid wireless users, but 440,000 of them were only signing up tablets. In the previous quarter, the company actually lost phone subscribers. In part, that explains new pricing for AT&T Mobile Share plans.

So AT&T is exposed to danger from T-Mobile US and its attack on phone accounts.

In large part because of that threat, AT&T has introduced what it calls the “best-ever prices” for people on its Mobile Share plans, wanting a family-size bucket of data and unlimited talk and text.

Along with Sprint’s new “Framily” plans, which allow unrelated individuals to create shared plans, the latest AT&T move also illustrates the importance of group plans in the U.S. mobile market, where 68.5 percent of postpaid customers are on such family plans, according to an analysis by Cowen and Company.

AT&T says a family of four can now get unlimited talk and text, and 10GB of data for $160 a month. Though partly aimed at new potential customers, the deal also allows existing AT&T customers to save money as well.

Current AT&T customers with four smartphones could move to this new plan and save between $40 and $100 per month, depending on their current plan, AT&T says.

As you would expect, the plan also is designed to compare favorably with family plans offered by AT&T’s leading competitors.

Verizon charges $260 monthly for a plan costing $160 from AT&T. A family with four smartphones with unlimited talk and text, and a shared 10GB bucket of data, could switch to AT&T from Verizon and save $100 a month.

In addition to the savings on recurring costs, such an account would get a $400 bill credit for the four smartphone lines of service added, when switching from Verizon, as part of another marketing effort AT&T is making.

The plans take effect on Feb. 2, 2014 and are available to any AT&T customer, including small businesses with up to 10 lines, and customers of Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and other wireless carriers who switch to AT&T.

Such price reductions are going to be a key concern for equity analysts watching for signs of impact on U.S. mobile service provider average revenue per account and average revenue per user.

The general expectation is that ARPU is going to drop as carriers face potential threats to gross revenue. AT&T obviously calculates it will gain more than it loses, as some accounts will purchase larger data allowances than they had in the past, even if some accounts are able to pay less.

5 Noteworthy Changes in Smartphone Market Share Between 2012 and 2013

Global smartphone market share shows five big changes in supplier standing between 2012 and 2013, according to IDC data.

In 2013, HTC and BlackBerry became less significant, while Huawei, Lenovo and LG gained notable share. 

Changes in share are not unusual. But it might be quite noteworthy that the amount of share change among the largest five or six suppliers has changed so much in a year. 

Bandwidth Growth: Nearly What One Would Expect from Moore's Law

If you believe consumer demand for bandwidth is going to slow down, you might not worry so much about creating more Internet access supply.

But it would take a brave forecaster indeed to argue that bandwidth growth will not continue at substantial rates, for the foreseeable future.

If current trends continue, people will need, and use, connections of a gigabit per second by 2020.

That might seem wild. It is not, and simply reflects a continuation of existing trends.

This really should shock you: consumer Internet access bandwidth has grown about as fast as Moore’s Law would suggest, according to Jakob Nielsen, Professor Rod Tucker and Phil Edholm, former Nortel's CTO.

Consider a 2004 prediction (remember that in 2000 most U.S. Internet users were on dial-up connections). 

“Edholm's Law says that in about five years (that would have been 2009) 3G (third-generation) wireless will routinely deliver 1 Mbps, Wi-Fi will bring nomadic access to 10 Mbps, and office desktops will connect at a standard of 1 gigabit per second.”

History has shown that prediction to be about right for mobile, possibly too conservative for Wi-Fi, while too optimistic about desktop connections.

Consider improvements in backhaul network bandwidth since about 1950, and especially since the advent of optical fiber. Backhaul bandwidth grows at a 30 percent annual rate, compared to the 50 percent a year rate of Moore’s Law processes.

    Historic Growth of Internet Access Bandwidth, Microwave Journal

Between 1984 and 2013, fixed network speeds have grown nearly as fast as Moore’s Law would suggest, as crazy as that sounds, knowing the physical nature of access networks, which are construction projects, not software apps.

Still, the data is stubborn and clear: Internet access bandwidth has grown about 50 percent annually since 1984.

Nielsen's Law is similar to Moore's Law. You might predict that computing capabilities would increase faster than access bandwidth, simply because access networks are construction intensive. 

Moore's Law suggests that computers double in capabilities every 18 months, corresponding to about 60 percent annual growth. Nielsen’s Law predicts bandwidth will grow at about 50 percent a year.

It isn't clear how ISPs in rural and remote areas will keep up. It certainly will not be easy. Still, history suggests that speeds, affordability and coverage will continue to progress in tough-to-reach areas, even if not fully at the pace of the urban areas where supplying bandwidth is easiest.

source: IEEE

Inq Mobile Shuts Down

A couple of years ago, it seemed as though a few viable ways to optimize a smartphone existed. Blackberry was optimized for email.

And some tried to optimize for social media. Years earlier, some devices were optimized for sports content (ESPN).

One might argue that none of those approaches yet has proven sistainably viable.

Inq Mobile is the latest casualty.

Will Consumers Welcome a Digital Wallet from Apple or Starbucks?

Perhaps we will find out, if both Apple and Starbucks do introduce retail payment systems. One might speculate that the firms will take different tacks. 

Apple might be thinking about creating a mobile point of sale system using iPads. Starbucks already has an investment in Square, so that approach seems less likely for Starbucks. 

Instead, Starbucks might only be thinking about ways other retailers can be incorporated into the Starbucks mobile payment environment. 

Google Did Not Make Out Badly With Motorola Mobility Buy

Maybe it was not a slam dunk. But neither was it a huge mistake. I don't know whether Google will keep tax loss carry forwards or not. But if Google managed to do so, the simple financials will be even better than they appear.

We'll find out when the next quarterly earnings report is released. 

Rationality is a Virtue When Discussing Communications Policy

So is civility, even when people disagree about communications policy in fundamental ways. 

Tata Communications Selling to Vodafone?

Tata Communications reportedly is in talks with Vodafone about a deal that would have Vodafone buying all of Tata Communications, though talks are said to be at a preliminary stage.

Vodafone had been expected to go on a buying spree after selling its stake in Verizon Wireless to Verizon Communications, and the rumored Tata Communications deal is the first evidence that Vodafone is moving.

Tata Communications is the number one global international wholesale voice operator and number one provider of international long distance, enterprise data and Internet services in India, earning about $3 billion annually.

Apple' Sales Volume Drops In Two Biggest Markets

Lots of people are waiting for Apple's next launch of new products, or are finding other alternatives, it appears.



Apple revenue from its two biggest segments -- Europe and the Americas -- have begun to contract, Fortune reports.



In the first quarter of 2014, Apple's combined Asian sales were $17.4 billion, more than Europe ($13 billion) and closing in on the Americas ($20 billion).

2008 was Inflection Point for Mobile Broadband

Global mobile connections will grow from 6.5 billion connections in 2013 to nine billion in 2018, according to researchers at iGR. And that probably is not the most-significant change likely to happen between 2013 and 2018.

Instead, the big change is the overwhelming role mobile will have in bringing Internet access to end users. As recently as 2008, broadband Internet access remained a primarily fixed network service.

Oddly enough, 2008 also was the year mobile broadband subscriptions reached an inflection point.

Business Segment Drives Time Warner Cable Growth

Despite continuing challenges in its consumer segment, namely net customer losses, Time Warner Cable managed to grow full-year 2013 revenue 3.4 percent year over year.



Business customer revenues grew 21.6 percent, while consumer high speed Internet access revenues grew 14.4 percent. 



Fourth-quarter 2013 average monthly revenue per residential customer relationship (ARPU) grew 2.2 percent to $106.03, the highest rate of growth since the first quarter of 2012, Time Warner Cable says.



Residential high-speed data ARPU increased 12.4 percent to $46.21. Time Warner Cable says it  now offers residential high-speed data speeds of 100 Mbps in several cities and regions, including Los Angeles, Kansas City and Hawaii. 



Residential wideband high-speed data subscribers (which includes the 30, 50, 75 and 100 Mbps tiers) more than doubled year over year to 910,000 subscribers. 



But consider that Time Warner Cable has 11.08 million total residential high speed Internet access customers, meaning that just eight percent of Time Warner Cable customers actually buy a tier of service at 30 Mbps or higher. 



It isn't that the higher speeds are unavailable; just that consumers apparently do not see the value-price relationship of the faster tiers as providing good value, at the moment. 



And that is a key point: whether high speed Internet access services are available for purchase is one issue. Whether people actually buy those services is a separate issue. One might argue that only eight percent of Time Warner Cable customers buy 30 Mbps, 50 Mbps, 75 Mbps or 100 Mbps service because it is not provided. That largely is untrue.



What is true is that people are choosing to buy service at lower speeds. That means Time Warner Cable has a demand issue, not a supply issue, even if some would say Time Warner Cable has lagged in investment that would boost speeds higher. 



Some might argue investment is not the immediate issue. Instead, consumer demand is too low. That is a far-different sort of problem than lack of supply.

Telecom Industry is Backwards Looking: Government Makes it So

Mobile networks have experienced four complete transitions of network technology in a few decades, doing so about once every 10 years.



The fixed network has been through a couple of network eras, without completely revamping the whole platform.



Looking at switching, it moved from simple crossbar switches to analog electronic switches to digital switches. In access technology, it has begun to move from copper wires to optical fiber. 



The biggest single transition, though, is the move from time division multiplexing to Internet Protocol, a subject the Federal Communications Commission will address at its Jan. 30, 2014 meeting, taking up an AT&T request to run trials related to the transition from TDM to IP.



Many of the issues are largely "social" rather than "technical" in nature, relating to how universal service and consumer protections are maintained. Emergency calling and preservation of competition likewise will have to be addressed, though none of those issues is fundamentally a technology issue.



It is fair enough to criticize large telcos for not moving fast enough. Sometimes they can't help it. The government makes them move slow.

Amazon to Enter Retail Payments Business

Amazon, the Wall Street Journal reports, is hoping to sell retailers a Kindle-based retail checkout system, likely positioned like Square and other providers of mobile credit card reader systems. 



The attraction would seem to be the access to customer data, not so much the lucrative payment terminal business. 



But Amazon might also be thinking it can bring other "value add" to the systems, compared to existing offers from other established payment system providers. The immediate inducements could relate to offers, promotions or discounts, especially related to retailer sales on Amazon.com



Longer term, Amazon might eventually leverage other assets. Amazon Web Services could come into play, or possibly logistics support. 



Amazon also reportedly is considering a mobile wallet service that would be used by consumers. 

Google Selling Motorola Mobility

Google says it is selling what remains of Motorola Mobility--while retaining the patent portfolio, to  PC maker Lenovo for $2.9 billion.



Google, which bought Motorola Mobioity for $12.5 billion in May 2012, already had sold off the part of the business building cable set-top boxes, and seems now to retain what it really wanted: the patent portfolio. 



The move does not completely address the channel conflict of Google being in some parts of the device market, such as it now is with Nest, the home automation supplier. But the move does ease the channel conflict potential to a significant extent.