Mobile Broadband Overtakes Wi-Fi

Proponents of mobile broadband have argued that 3G and other mobile broadband networks ultimately would make Wi-Fi networks largely unnecessary. While that is not yet completely true, it increasingly true. Mobile broadband now has pushed the mobile phone networks ahead of Wi-Fi hotspots as the most popular way of accessing the Internet on the move, in the United Kingdom, according to Point Topic.

U.K. mobile phone companies have managed to grow their market share to 47 percent of users accessing the Internet away from home or work, compared to 42 percent who use Wi-Fi hotspots. A year earlier the ratio was 40:30 in favor of Wi-Fi, Point Topic says.

Point Topic says 26 percent of those who use a mobile network to access the Internet are O2 customers. Orange and Vodafone each take about 20 percent of the market, while T-Mobile and 3 have 14 percent and 12 percent respectively.

Vodafone is the leading provider of the dongle-user segment, with 24 percent share. of respondents. O2 comes in at 23 percent, followed by Orange, T-Mobile and 3, Point Topic says.

RSS Stalled?

Now this prediction I will find quite shocking, if it materializes: Forrester Research now estimates that use of Real Simple Syndication (RSS) might be nearing a peak of usage, among online marketers. About half of marketers already have put RSS feeds on their Web sites.

Keep in mind that RSS is used by about 11 percent of Web users, up from two percent in 2005, reports Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion.

It might be one thing to forecast that RSS is a technology that is not going mainstream anytime soon. It is quite something else to predict it is nearing saturation.

Forrester says a recent survey of marketers found that of the 89 percent of those who don't use feeds, only 17 percent say they're interested in using them.

"Unless marketers make a move to hook them, and try to convert their apathetic counterparts, RSS will never be more than a niche technology," Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang suggests.

Rubel himself does think RSS use by marketers has peaked. But then, I'm biased. I can't think of any development more important for many content businesses than RSS.

P2P Really Stresses the Upstream

Overall, peer-to-peer file sharing represents 43.5 percent of total North American consumer broadband consumption, while Web browsing represetns 27.3 percent and streaming contributes 14.8 percent of overall demand.

But those statistics conceal something far more fundamental about P2P impact on access networks.

In the upstream direction, P2P absolutely dominates. The three biggest traffic generators in the upstream direction are P2P at 75 percent of total load, tunneling at 9.9 percent and Web browsing at 9.1 percent. Entertainment, not productivity, is driving bandwidth consumption during the peak evening hours.

Web traffic and streaming videos account for 59 per cent of downstream bandwidth consumption as well, says Sandvine. The three biggest traffic generators in the downstream direction are P2P at 35.6 percent, Web browsing at 31.6 percent and streaming content at 17.9 percent.

Over time, the proportion of P2P traffic might decline as a percentage of total, as more streaming services aimed at PCs and TVs take hold. Those services will add more demand primarily in the downstream direction.

80% of Mobile Users Send Text Messages; or Do They?

The amount of time users spend doing things on their mobile phones is increasing. About the only issue is by how much. 

About 54 percent of mobile users surveyed in September 2008 reported their usage had increased by more than 25 percent over the past two years. One-fifth of respondents estimated their usage had increased by 50 percent or more. 

One third of respondents talked on their mobile phone more than 10 hours per week, and 34 percent of respondents ages 17 and under talked for more than 15 hours weekly.

Nearly four out of 10 mobile Internet users said they surfed the mobile Web for two or more hours every week. The key adjective there is "mobile Web" users. Other researchers have found that just about 16 percent of mobile users have the ability to access the Web from their mobiles. 

Some 62 percent of mobile users surveyed said they either already owned a smart phone or would own one within the next 12 months.

Text messaging is nearly universal, with 80 percent of mobile users saying they use that feature and 29 percent of those who did spent more than two hours every week on the activity, says Azuki Systems. 

Researchers at Nielsen Mobile don't think so. They report just 53 percent text messaging usage during the second quarter of 2008. 

Vonage Dodges a Bullet

Vonage has Vonage has signed definitive agreements to refinance its convertible debt, a move that virtually everybody assumed was essential for Vonage to stay in business, and about which there has been doubt in some quarters. 

The financing package consists of a $130.3 million senior secured first lien credit facility, a $72.0 million senior secured second lien credit facility, and the sale of $18.0 million of senior secured third lien convertible notes.

Vonage says it will use the net proceeds of the financing along with its own cash on hand to repurchase up to $253.5 million of the company's existing convertible notes in a tender offer commenced on July 30, 2008. 

Verizon Has Fewest Dropped Calls

Verizon Wireless has the lowest percentage of dropped calls among all major U.S. service providers, according to ChangeWave.

Verizon subscribers report that, on average, just 2.7 percent of their calls were dropped over the past 90 days, nearly a percentage point better than AT&T (3.6 percent), their closest competitor.

Sprint/Nextel (4.4 percent) and T-Mobile (4.5 percent) were third and fourth respectively.

Importantly, one-in-five Verizon users (20 percent) say they didn't experience ANY dropped calls over the past three months, compared to 18 percent for T-Mobile, 17 percent for AT&T, and 10 percent for Sprint/Nextel.

In addition, 43 percent of Verizon's customers in the survey say they're "very satisfied" with Verizon's service.

New Versions of Chrome and Firefox are Faster

New beta versions of Firefox and Google Chrome now are available, and in recent tests, CNet found Firefox the fastest, with Chrome right behind, in executing JavaScript, which powers applications such as Gmail and Google Docs. 

The answer: both browsers made big strides, but Firefox still beats Chrome on one widely-used performance test, says  Stephen Shankland. CNet writer.

When Chrome was released, Shankland ran Google's JavaScript speed test on Firefox 3.0.1, the initial Chrome beta, Internet Explorer 7 and 8 beta 2, and Safari 3.1.2. 

He found Chrome led the speed test with an overall score of 1,851 and Firefox in second place at 205. 

Running the same test on the latest developer version of Chrome, 0.3.154.3, boosted the browser's score to 2,265, a 22 percent increase. And Firefox jumped 15 percent to 235. Firefox 3.1 beta one, he says. 

That test measures Firefox without its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine enabled, though.

Faster execution matters for a couple of reasons. At some point, the browser will become the client for executing any number of consumer and enterprise applications that are not stored on a local hard drive. Speed will matter. 

Also, users simply like faster-executing Web pages.  Faster execution provides a higher end user experience.