Add Low Reputation Scores to Low Customer Satisfaction Performance

It will not come as a surprise that Internet service providers, telcos, cable TV or satellite TV firms suffer in virtually all studies of customer satisfaction. It appears they also have that problem in the area of company reputation as well.

A study of company reputation shows telcos, cable TV and satellite TV companies in the bottom half of the rankings. The top score was earned by Wegman’s, the grocery chain. If you ever have shopped there, you will know why.

Apple and Google scored 80 and change. Verizon Communications scored 69. Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile US scored 67.

DirecTV scored a 65, while Comcast and Charter Communications scored 60. Dish Network scored 58.

One might argue those scores are the result of deliberate choices, not malfeasance or dumbness. Some businesses arguably cannot afford to spend very much on “delighting customers.”

Car dealers, for example, might reasonably assume that “repeat buying” opportunities actually are rather rare. If that is the case, only so much rationally should be spent on customer experience.

Most consumer telecom or video subscription companies might rationally assume the average account life cycle is four years, perhaps less. If so, practitioners might be making rational choices about how much to spend upgrading customer experience and service.

Occasionally firms might underspend too severely, and see churn rates increase. But in all likelihood no firm in the consumer segment wants to overspend. And that might account for the generally low customer satisfaction or reputation scores earned by service providers.

How Much Revenue Could U.S. ISPs Lose as Competition Builds?

Some argue the U.S. Internet service provider business could lose about $2 billion a month in subscriber revenues were the market to use a regulatory framework such as exists in the United Kingdom and most of Europe, where most ISPs operate using wholesale access provided by an underlying carrier.

Even if one argues that a major shift of regulatory framework does not happen, it still is possible to argue that U.S. high speed access competition will grow, in the near future, if for no other reason than that new providers, including Google and a growing number of other firms, see the gigabit access market as interesting and sustainable.

Verizon Wireless, historically the U.S. mobile service provider most hesitant to compete on price, has launched new offers offering more for the same price.

At the same time, for a growing number of consumers, mobile Internet access is becoming a viable substitute for fixed network access. That trend is likely to accelerate as 5G networks, supporting speeds up to a gigabit per second, are launched in a decade or so.

Also at least for a couple of more years, U.S. government policy is likely to continue in a direction of “more regulation, not less.”

Whether such competition could shave $24 billion in existing annual ISP revenues is the issue. For starters, it is increasingly difficult to identify the size of the high speed access revenue stream, since most U.S. consumers buy a triple play package where the actual revenue contributors are accounting issues (attributed revenues).

“It seems, at the moment, likely that some version of increased competition will drive prices down in the next five years,” Point Topic argues.  

In fact, the Federal Communications Commission already has tried that approach, in the wake of the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and abandoned the approach in favor of facilities-based competition, a move many would credit for rapid investment in next generation access facilities.

The perhaps-unpleasant reality is that “competition” and “investment” are contradictory goals, where it comes to the use of wholesale facilities. The reason is simple enough to comprehend.

Where one actual network services provider is required to sell wholesale access with significant discounts (half retail price, for example), there is almost no incentive for a retail service provide to invest in its own assets.

If the underlying carrier must provide highly-discounted access to the network, the value of the upgrade cannot be captured.

To use an analogy, how much innovation would Apple be willing to pursue were it forced to sell as an original equipment manufacturer to all other device retailers, allowing them access to all the core features, including iTunes and the app store, at a 50-percent discount?

On the other hand, there is little incentive for the network services provider to invest further, if it is required to make the new facilities available to wholesale buyers on the same terms as presently required.

The Federal Communications Commission has not yet voted on rules that would classify Internet service providers as common carriers, but the legal challenges already are being prepared. As always, the challenges will rely on specific points of law outside the domain of a typical consumer’s frame of reference.

The point is that business headwinds in the U.S. high speed access market are building.

Big IoT Revenue Impact Within 3 Years?

Expectations for business benefit from the Internet of Things (IoT) arguably are wildly overestimated at the moment.

Many would agree IoT will be big, at some point. Accenture has estimated a $14.3 trillion impact by 2030, just in industrial applications. But there arguably is a big gap between hopes and actual business models that help organizations realize those dreams.

Consider the results of a survey by Gartner that found more than 40 percent of 463 surveyed IT and business leaders expect the Internet of Things (IoT) to transform their business or offer significant new revenue or cost-savings opportunities over the next three years.

At the same time, most also said their organizations have not established clear business or technical leadership for their IoT efforts.

Less than 25 percent of survey respondents report they have established clear business leadership for the IoT, either in the form of a single organizational unit owning the issue or multiple business units taking ownership of separate IoT efforts.

"The survey confirmed that the IoT is very immature, and many organizations have only just started experimenting with it," said Nick Jones, Gartner VP. "Only a small minority have deployed solutions in a production environment.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft Pay Adblock Plus "Not to Block"

Google, Amazon and Microsoft pay Adblock Plus, the world’s most popular software for blocking online advertising, to stop blocking ads on their sites. That is ironic.

Many advocate strong network neutrality rules, in large part, on the grounds that any paid forms of packet delivery are unfair. Paid prioritization gives big companies who can pay for expedited delivery an advantage over small companies who cannot pay for such services.

So here we have Google, Amazon and Microsoft paying to given their own advertising priority over ads shown by all other advertisers who do not pay for the privilege.

Don’t get me wrong. Adblock Plus can do as it likes to stay in business. Google, Amazon and Microsoft have the right to try and protect their revenue streams. I as a user can avail myself of Adblock Plus, or not, as I choose.

Big firms, or firms with lots of money or other advantages, will use those advantages in the marketplace, just as many firms already pay for content prioritization, using content delivery networks.

Adblock Plus, Google, Amazon and Microsoft can do as they please with their voluntary business arrangements. But others should be able to do so as well, so long as the deals are voluntary, mutually agreed upon and available to any who wish to participate in such deals.

No, it is not “completely fair.” Nothing in business, and little in life, actually is “completely fair.”

So long as people can use any lawful Internet app, and have choices about their Internet access providers, firms should be free to compete as they see fit. We always have antitrust tools to wield if the market doesn’t work so well.

Mobile Now Shapes Global Bandwidth Demand

It might still seem a bit unusual to hear an executive at a major company in the undersea bandwidth business argue that his firm, like all others, has to be “in” the mobile business.

“Without mobile, you are in trouble: you have to be part of mobile.” according to Andrew Kwok, Hutchison Global Communications president, international and carrier business.

That doesn’t necessarily mean offering retail mobile services. It does reflect a recognition of what drives global bandwidth.  Mobile connections already outnumber fixed Internet access connections globally.

Of roughly three billion Internet connections in service in 2014, about 2.3 billion used mobile access.  

That said, North American fixed network bandwidth consumption is between two and three orders of magnitude higher than median end user consumption.

But mobile consumption is growing, in part because more smartphones are in use, and in part because video is becoming the dominant driver of mobile bandwidth.

About 75 percent of mobile data traffic in 2019 will be driven by smartphones, according to the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index.

Mobile video traffic exceeded 50 percent of total mobile data traffic by the end of 2012 and grew to 55 percent by the end of 2014.

So mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 57 percent from 2014 to 2019, reaching 24.3 exabytes per month by 2019, according to Cisco.

In a sense, mobile is growing in importance because it increasingly represents the way most people use the Internet. Mobile networks also are getting faster. For example, 4G traffic will be more than half of the total mobile traffic by 2017.

At the same time, Internet traffic now dominates global bandwidth requirements, and content--especially video content--dominates Internet traffic.

Increasingly, for all those reasons, mobile also drives Internet traffic, growing 45 percent annually.

Global mobile data traffic grew 69 percent in 2014, for example.

Granted, service providers have several tools to increase effective bandwidth. Different network architectures and better air interfaces will help. But almost nobody believes the growth can be accommodated without allocation of additional spectrum.

Still, more traffic will be offloaded from mobile networks--on to Wi-Fi networks--than remains on mobile networks by 2016. Without offload, mobile data traffic would have grown 84 percent rather than 69 percent in 2014.

Still, virtually every trend other than offload drives higher mobile data consumption.

Global mobile devices and connections in 2014 grew to 7.4 billion, up from 6.9 billion in 2013.

Smartphones accounted for 88 percent of that growth, with 439 million net additions in 2014.

Globally, smart devices represented 26 percent of the total mobile devices and connections in 2014; they accounted for 88 percent of the mobile data traffic.

Mobile network (cellular) connection speeds grew 20 percent in 2014. Globally, the average mobile network downstream speed in 2014 was 1,683 kilobits per second (kbps), up from 1,387 kbps in 2013.

In 2014, a fourth-generation (4G) connection generated 10 times more traffic on average than a non‑4G connection. Although 4G connections represent only six percent of mobile connections today, they already account for 40 percent of mobile data traffic.

Average smartphone usage grew 45 percent in 2014. The average amount of traffic per smartphone in 2014 was 819 MB per month, up from 563 MB per month in 2013.

Most bandwidth buyers (mobile or fixed, commercial or non-profit, industrial or media) are fundamentally similar in many ways, in terms of expectations. What is changing is that more of the total demand is coming from content or media companies and mobile service providers.

That underlies Kwok’s argument about the need to be part of the mobile business.

Mobile Now Drives 25% of All Online Transactions

In the fourth quarter of 2014, 25.8 percent of global online transactions took place on a mobile device, according to Adyen. That is the first time mobile payments have accounted for more than a quarter of global online payments since Adyen began tracking mobile payments  in June 2013.

Mobile transactions grew 11 percent sequentially and 37 percent year over year.

“For many companies, mobile is now the primary sales channel, rather than simply a key sales channel,” said Roelant Prins, Adven chief commercial officer.

The iPad generated 34 percent of mobile transactions, the iPhone 32 percent, while Android phones contributed 25 percent.

If the current trends persist, Android may surpass the iPhone and iPad in the latter half of 2015 while the iPad also loses its lead over the iPhone, if perhaps not in 2015.

Smartphones represented 58 percent of mobile transactions in the quarter.

Smartphone transactions accounted for about 20 percent of all online transaction for digital goods (including games, services like club memberships, hotel reservations, and tickets).

In the case of retail goods (clothing, furniture, appliances, groceries), smartphones accounted for less than 10 percent of retail purchases.

Telefonica Reduces FTTH Investment Pace Because of Wholesale Rules

Telefonica has decided to reduce its planned investment in its fiber-to-home network after

the National Commission of Markets and Competition proposed that Telefónica offer wholesale access to competitors.

The NCMC proposal exempts the wholesale requirement in nine Spanish municipalities, including Madrid and Barcelona, but would force Telefonica to sell wholesale access to competitors potentially 84 percent of the population.

The proposal exempts the wholesale requirement in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Malaga, Seville, Valencia, Alcalá de Henares, Badalona, ​​Coslada and Móstoles, which collectively account for 16 percent of the Spanish population.

Telefonica currently accounts for 85 percent of Spain's fiber-to-home networks.

Telefonica plans to cut FTTH deployments by 35 percent, or to some 3.6 million homes in 2015, down from the initial 5.5 million planned, as a result of the CNMC proposal.

Telefonica originally had expected to connect about 300,000 new households each month.

Telefonica connected five million new homes to its FTTH network in 2014, doubling its total coverage to 10 million premises. Since 2008, high speed access prices in Spain have dropped 30 percent.

Higher levels of competition arguably account for those trends.

Telefonica has 46 percent market share, with Orange holding about 27 percent, Vodafone-Ono about 21 percent.

The move is not unexpected, as most tier one service providers oppose mandatory wholesale requirements, and especially new requirements on next generation infrastructure.

Though competition between multiple facilities-based contestants typically obviates the need for such wholesale policies, in many markets that might not be practical. In such cases, mandatory wholesale policies are necessary.

Still, how wholesale policies are implemented makes a big difference. Sharing of passive layers, with no sharing of active layers, for example, arguably provides more competitive differentiation.

5G Projections are Likely to Be Wrong; Only Issue is How

Whether fifth generation mobile networks actually will develop as some expect is a big question. Few of the digital generations of mobile actually have developed as originally foreseen.

Supporters of 2G missed the appeal of text messaging.

When proposed, 3G was supposed to lead to a wave of application development. Eventually, it arguably did, but not in the way supporters had forecast. Originally, it had been hoped the big wave of innovation would substantially benefit carriers. Instead, the applications largely were developed by third parties.

Now 4G might be said to be in search of the “killer app” that will define it. It might be safe to say we do not yet know, and that most present guesses might turn out to be as wrong as earlier expectations about 2G or 3G were mistaken.

It might also go without saying that prognosticators frequently have been mistaken about companion developments on the handset or infrastructure sides of the business. Some might have assumed that the European leadership in handsets during the 2G and 3G eras would continue in the 4G era, and that has not proven to be the case, so far.

Application development, meanwhile, has largely shifted to the United States and Asia. For that reason, industrial policy around 5G is growing heated. Success in that realm probably also is uncertain, if only because there is so much uncertainty overall.

Most projections of mobile service provider future revenue tend to show many new types of services beyond basic Internet access or connectivity. What tends to vary is the precise combination of new services and revenue streams that will drive results.

The unsettling background, from a service provider perspective, is the end of the closed telecom market, and the need to operate in an open Internet ecosystem. Almost by definition, serious innovation will be necessary.

Many would agree with the notion that mobile service providers and telcos might have to replace as much as half their present revenue in about a decade.

Traditionally, however, telcos also have tended to push for regulatory change seen as helpful.

How much help potential regulatory changes could provide also are issues. European service provider executives believe regulations have been too stringent, and must be relaxed.

Executives also tend to believe European markets are too fragmented, and that consolidation is required to build scale.

But service provider executives in Europe also want more regulation of over the top competitors.

None of that will prove decisive unless the business model issues are successfully dealt with.

"Certified" Android Loses Share in Q4 2014; Apple Erupts

“Certified” Android smartphone shipments fell quarter over quarter for the first time in the fourth quarter 2014, in part because of gains by Apple IoS and partly because “forked” versions of Android are gaining market share.

Certified Android shipments fell from 217 million in the third quarter of  2014 to 206 million in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Apple iOS had share growth of 90 percent. Where Apple shipped 39.3 million devices in the third quarter, Apple moved 74.5 million iPhones in the fourth quarter of 2014.

“Google’s Android is being attacked by Apple’s iOS at the high end and forked Android and AOSP at the low end in high growth emerging markets,” said Nick Spencer, ABI Research senior practice director.

Such changes are far from unusual. In 2007, Nokia was far and away the global leader in handsets. By 2014, Apple had surged to the lead, Nokia had fallen far back and some 2007 suppliers either had exited the market, or were on the verge of irrelevance. Sustainable advantage in the mobile device market seems unlikely.  

"You Have to be Part of Mobile"

The undersea capacity business is not generally viewed as a part of the telecommunications business where intimate knowledge of end user behavior makes a big practical difference.

That behavior is aggregated to a high level, so what a carrier really must know is “how much is needed,” from “one point to another.”

But that doesn’t mean there are no differences between today’s business, and yesterday’s. The model is “old business, new revenue,” according to Andrew Kwok, Hutchison Global Communications president, international and carrier business.

Talking recently about future revenue for his company and others in the space, Kwok said that “without mobile, you are in trouble: you have to be part of mobile.”

Internet traffic now dominates global bandwidth requirements, and content--especially video content--dominates Internet traffic. Increasingly, mobile also drives Internet traffic, growing 45 percent annually.

Much the same impact can be seen in data center traffic, which increasingly shapes global traffic glows.

Dish Network is Surprise Winner in AWS-3 Spectrum Auction

AT&T spent $18.2 billion to acquire AWS-3 spectrum; Dish Network won $13.3 billion; Verizon bought $10.4 billion worth of rights and T-Mobile US committed $1.7 billion in recently-completed auctions of 700-MHz spectrum.

AT&T seems to have won most of the 10 MHz by 10 MHz allocations nationwide, while the other bidders mostly won the 5 MHz by 5 MHz allocations.

Dish Network perhaps was the surprise, committing the second-largest amount of money in the auction. The issue now becomes whether Dish Network will commit to building a new mobile network, or will sell the spectrum rights to another company.

By some estimates, Dish Network’s mobile spectrum is worth perhaps $20 billion.

The huge unanswered question is "what happens next," where it comes to Dish Network and its mobile strategy. Some skeptics have been willing to believe, all along, that Dish Network ultimately would simply try to monetize its spectrum assets by selling them or leasing them to another existing mobile service provider.

The success of that strategy hinges on whether one of the leading providers is willing to pay what Dish Network wants, in terms of price. Most observers looking at that scenario would see Verizon as the likely buyer.

But Verizon has sent some signals it does not need to buy Dish Network's spectrum. Perhaps that is because it always is possible that Sprint might sell some of its excess spectrum to Verizon, instead.

Dish Network's chairman is, quite literally, a gambler, so the gamble is not unusual. Some might prefer that Dish Network create a new network and get into the mobile market. 

Some might argue Dish Network will launch a bid to buy all or at least majority control of T-Mobile US. Others think Dish Network does not have the capital or borrowing power to do that.

Many have suggested Dish Network could lease network facilities from Sprint, for example, rapidly gaining the network infrastructure it requires.

Beyond all that, there is the question of business model. Would Dish Network have much success competing as a traditional mobile service provider? Or must it gamble on creating a whole network primarily to deliver mobile video entertainment? And, if so, does the business model work?

Dish Network's most-recent spectrum winnings do not settle the matter, one way or the other.

Would Verizon and AT&T Consider a "Use Best Network" Approach on Steroids?

It looks as though we might relatively soon get new tests of the value of network agnostic access.

If Google launches its own mobile service, relying on Wi-Fi, Sprint and T-Mobile US networks we might start to get a sense of how 5G mobile networks will operate, aggregating the best access “available right now.”

Whether that devalues or enhances the value of any specific retail operator’s offering remains to be seen, though 5G supporters obviously believe such “any network” access will enhance value for any retail mobile services provider.

Comcast is expected to do something along those lines, using a “Wi-Fi first” approach. Cablevision Systems Corp., in one sense, is using the “legacy” approach, relying on an owned network solely. Granted, it might be odd to classify a “Wi-Fi only” mobile network as a “legacy” approach, but that is what a sole reliance on an owned Wi-Fi network represents.

The long-term business issue is whether leading mobile networks would agree to allow a “use the best access” approach that includes roaming onto the networks of key competitors. An example: AT&T and Verizon customers having reciprocal rights to access either network, depending on which network has the strongest signal or the least congestion, right now.

That might have seemed crazy in the past, as both firms have competed fiercely to build and operate the “best” network, in terms of signal strength and coverage, as well as bandwidth.

But the emergence of new competitors, including Google, Comcast, Cablevision and Dish Network, on top of competition from Sprint and T-Mobile US, might change the strategic rationale.

If customers of AT&T and Verizon were able to automatically access the best network--AT&T, Verizon or Wi-Fi--that might add value to both carrier offers, compared to all the others.

As unthinkable as cooperation between AT&T and Verizon might be, it is not unthinkable.

BT to Lean on G.fast to Boost High Speed Access to 500 Mbps

BT plans to boost high speed access to as much as 500 Mbps, to most U.K. homes, within a decade, with fiber to home gigabit service also being made available.

By about 2020, BT expects to have boosted speeds to “a few hundred megabits per second to millions of homes and businesses by 2020,” BT says.

Speeds will then increase to around 500 Mbps as the new “G.fast” implementation of digital subscriber line technology improves.

G.fast deployment will start in late 2016 or early 2017, BT now believes.

Since 1998, DSL speeds have grown by two orders of magnitude (100 times), so long as copper drops are short enough. In essence, that is the same principle used by cable TV hybrid fiber coax networks, which also combine fiber backbones with copper drop media.

If drop lengths are short enough (less than about 300 feet), speeds to 1 Gbps are theoretically possible. That implies a deployment of fiber almost to the premises. In urban areas, that might mean fiber to a cluster of two detached houses, for example.

G.fast is the latest implementation of a technology many observers, early on, had believed would be quite problematic.

What Does Market Signal About Need for Heavier AT&T Regulation?

Are tier-one telcos behemoths with power to stifle other competitors, or business-challenged entities barely able to cope with the magnitude of changes in their core businesses?

It is a question that goes to the heart of assessments about “what is to be done” about supplying and enhancing high speed access, mobile and other essential services.

The reason is simple: if tier-one telcos are dangerous potential monopolists, regulators have to be on guard against abuse of market power. But if tier-one telcos are fundamentally challenged, different policies are called for.

European regulators arguably have held both positions over the past couple of decades. Two decades ago, the emphasis was on restraining tier one service providers to enhance competition.

Today, the concern essentially is that there is too much competition in European markets, and that service providers are not able to justify investing enough to upgrade networks as regulators and others believe is necessary.

Perhaps ironically, that situation might be developing in the U.S. market as well, even if the largest U.S. service providers have been performing, financially, much better than many peers.

Consider that AT&T revenue has grown from about $43.9 billion in 2005 to $132.4 billion in  2014. Some might point out that represents compound annual growth of 13 percent.

Little of that growth came from organic growth, however. Also, earnings per share actually decreased from $1.42 to $1.19 over that period, at a  -1.94 percent compound annual rate.

And some might note that the stock price has grown from about $27 to about $33 since 2008, a gain of about $6 per share, or about 22 percent, in seven years.

The Standard and Poors 500 Index, by way of contrast, stood at about 1454. In 2014 the index had reached about 2000, a gain of 546 points or about 38 percent, in inflation-adjusted terms.

In non-inflation-adjusted terms, the SP 500 index is up about 70 percent since 2005, while AT&T is up about 38 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Index and American Stock Exchange (AMEX) are up more than 62 percent over that same period.

The point is that AT&T has appreciated about half as much as the SP 500 index, and underperformed both the AMEX and Dow Industrial index.

That might suggest significant pressure in the business. Of course, opinions will differ. But looking only at equity price appreciation, one might argue AT&T has significantly underperformed.

Some would take that as a clear sign the market signals relative weakness. And that is why some of us would argue increasing regulatory burdens are unwarranted.