U.S. and U.K. Users Represent Half of Mobile Web Browsing

About 29 percent of global mobile Web browsing traffic now happens in the United States, with about 20.3 percent happening in the United Kingdom. Between them, the United States and United Kingdom now represent about half of global mobile Web browsing, says bango.

That might come as a surprise to many. What might be a bigger surprise is the number of people who now land on Web sites using a mobile. That could be an issue: sites not optimized for mobile access might not execute some expected functions at all, others poorly.

But most businesses do not have mobile-optimized websites.“Many people simply have no idea that they have visitors from mobile devices accessing their PC-optimized website, says Anil Malhotra, Bango SVP."These mobile visitors are simply invisible to them.”

The statistics also show that while some countries such as India and Indonesia have a good appetite for browsing on their mobiles, it doesn’t always convert into purchases. In fact, only five countries in the Top-10 browsing chart are also in the Top-10 payments chart. Those countries are the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, South Africa and Spain.

“When it comes to payments though, the US is accelerating faster than any other country and now accounts for 57 percent of payments worldwide,” says Malhotra.

No matter how high the browsing rate, it is only converted into a high purchase rate where people have a good disposable income and can pay for content on their phone bills, bango says. In regions such as India, South Africa, Indonesia and Egypt the driver for mobile browsing is a lack of fixed-line broadband and PCs for accessing the Internet which means that the mobile device is the only way people can get onto the Internet.

Google Voice to Launch Within Days

Nearly two years after acquiring GrandCentral, Google is preparing to relaunch the service with lots of new features. GrandCentral has been in private beta for the last two years and over the next few days Google will be prompting existing beta users to upgrade to Google Voice before rolling out the service to new users in a few weeks.

GrandCentral was a Web-activated IP voice service that uses a single "public" number that points to other numbers and devices, providing a range of visual voice mail and Web message retrieval and call management features.

Google Voice will add the ability to make free calls to U.S. telephone numbers and cheap calls to other numbers, make conference calls, and send, receive, store, and search SMS messages and create transcripts of voice mails.

From my perspective, one of the best new features is the ability to deliver the Google Voice number, even when placing a call from some other real device. The reason for that is that Google Voice features are applied to inbound calls using the virtual number.

If anybody calls using the actual device's "delivered" number (caller ID), the features aren't available. So it now will be easier to deliver the Google Voice caller ID on outbound calls, which virtually assures that return calls will arrive in a way that allows call management features to work.

Also, voice mail now will more nearly resemble email, and users can create transcripts of calls, a useful feature for many call settings.

Hopefully, Google will make address book importation easier as well. That, and the inability to simply deliver the GrandCentral virtual phone number, have been my two biggest problems using the service.

Comcast Passes Qwest as Phone Provider

Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable television company, says it now has become the third-largest provider of primary home phone service in the United States, overtaking telephone company Qwest Communications International.

Comcast, which started offering phone services in the spring of 2005, said it now has 6.47 million subscribers.

RCN Metro Has "Nice Problems"

Here's a problem any service provider sales staff would like to have: trying to figure out why sales are running ahead of projections for four months in a row. But that's precisely the issue Phil Alvarez, RCN Metro Optical Networks president, says he has been "grappling" with over the last four months.

"Gven our sales across all markets, we were trying to figure out why we are doing so well," says Alvarez. "You

question yourself." When RCN Metro dug into the numbers, it found very strong activity in wireless, a result of wireless providers really shoring up their backbones to support wireless broadband services. Need for more route diversity and the ability to provision very quickly also were factors.

You might think any provider with exposure to the financial services industry might face some exposure. Sure, there's some churn, says Alvarez. But "our services address trading requirements, data center connectivity and connections to customers and trading partners," Alvarez says.

So they still are buying. The financial services industry is used to periodic downturns, Alvarez says. They know business will pick up again so they have to keep moving. Their core business plans require capacity investments.

That said, RCN has seen some minimal recession impact. Some customers say they might substitute new providers for some services, on some routes, in some areas, in part because, on some selected routes, and for some services, a great deal of very-aggressive pricing is going on, in areas such as transit services. What is more obvious is pricing pressure on high-traffic routes, though. In other areas, on a highly route dependent basis, prices are relatively firm, or firming.

Generally, on routes where there is pricing pressure, it is Ethernet capacity pricing that is most exposed, not SONET capacity, which Maura Mahoney, RCN VP, says is quite strong.

That isn't to say the recession is haivng no impact at all. It is reasonable to assume that, industrywide, customers are asking for, and might be getting, more capacity for any given level of payment, especially when contracts are renegotiated early, locked in for more years or when upgrades from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, or 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps services occur.

That does not seem to be the case for10-Gbps and wavelength purchases, though, says Alvarez.

To be sure, lower prices wouldn't be much unusual in the capacity business, which is used to virtually annual decreases in price-per-megabit-per-second pricing.

In some cases, customers are asking for shorter contract intervals. Where customers might have been buying contracts of five to seven years' length, they are in some cases making three-year commitments. Historically, longer commitments have been associated with a belief that prices would be climbing, shorter commitements with a belief that prices will be falling. That might not be the primary driver at the moment, but could be playing a factor.

Crowded routes are being hammered by low price competitors, though, and Alvarez believes that is not sustainable.

Still, Alvarez says he has been "surprised" at the levels of demand.

A nice problem to have, these days.

AT&T to Add 3,?000 Jobs, Reduce CapEx $2-$3 Billion

AT&T plans to invest $17 billion to $18 billion in 2009, in line with its 2007 capital expenditures of $17.7 billion, though not as much as the almost $20 billion it spent in 2008.

About two thirds of AT&T's 2009 investment will go to its wireless and wired broadband networks The company also says it will add almost 3,000 jobs in 2009, primarily to support mobility, broadband and video services.

AT&T also expects to reduce jobs in other areas, primarily wireline. Some of the investment is in more than 2,100 new cell sites across the country, as well as an expansion of 3G service to 20 new markets in 2009. .

AT&T also says it will invest in its IP/MPLS backbone networks, U-verse, more DSL coverage.

NTIA Broadband Stimulus Meeting: Little Meat on Bones

The National Telecommunications and Information Agency held a public meeting on how the broadband stimulus programs will work, and attendees emerged with little more concrete detail than they entered with, with a couple of suggestive bits of guidance.

Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, NTIA associate administrator, suggested the agency will try to allot its $4.7 billion for broadband programs in three rounds of grants, with the first round coming between April and June. The NTIA is required to allocate all the money by September 2010.

The Rural Utilities Service, with about $2.5 billion to allocate, also likely have three rounds of grants and possibly loans, with a funding notice coming out within 60 to 90 days, said David Villano, USDA assistant administrator for telecommunications programs.

Moody's Issues "Most Likely to Default" List

Here's a list no company wants to be on: a new Moody's list of 283 companies which it believes are the most likely to default on their debt within 12 months. Moody's estimates about 45 percent of "Bottom Rung" companies will default on debt in the next year.Among the firms of interest to communications industry watchers:

Blockbuster,  CavTel, Charter Communications, Clearwire, Cleveland Unlimited, Global Crossing, Grande Communications, Intelsat, Integra Telecom, Level 3 Communications, Palm, Primus Telecommunications and Securus Technologies.

The Bottom Rung list, which Moody's will update monthly, represents roughly the riskiest 15 percent of all companies the agency tracks.  Seeking Alpha calls it the "leper list." Others call it the "death list." Others might call it a potential list of "dead pool" companies.  

Whatever one calls it, it is not a list one wants to be on. Some of them have been in dangerous straits for years, though, without crashing. One hopes Moody's is wrong.