Bandwidth Caps a Competitive Disadvantage?

Time Warner Cable has shelved its plans to shift its residential broadband customers to “consumption-based billing”, at least for the moment, as a way of controlling excessive bandwidth use by a small number of really-heavy users and maintaining quality of service for other users who share the network. Short of investing in a higher-capacity access network, it isn't clear how some way of matching consumption to cost is avoidable, long term.

But that points out one advantage Verizon Communications has: it has ample access bandwidth to provide uncapped usage, which could become a marketing weapon wherever it competes with other providers who do impose caps or other sorts of restrictions.

http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/stories/2009/04/20/story5.html?ana=from_rss

Bandwidth Caps Driving Dissatisfaction?

One wonders whether consumer outrage about Time Warner Cable's bandwidth caps play some role in Time Warner Cable's low consumer happiness ratings.

Time Warner ranks on this March 2009 survey as low as Charter, which never has had especially high consumer satisfaction ratings.

Frankly, we are used to seeing Time Warner rank higher than this.

Ranking that low--equivalent to Charter-- is absolutely nothing to be proud of, and quite a change from past years.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/162928/time_warner_changes_but_keeps_bandwidth_caps.html?tk=rss_main

Twitter Crosses the Chasm

There's a difference between early adopters and mass markets. That being the case, Twitter is crossing an adoption chasm.  Early adopters will look around for the next new thing, because it won't be so much fun now that "everybody" is discovering it.

But what also is likely to occur is that Twitter's usefulness now will grow, as the reason most people use tools is that they are useful. Twitter is now about to find its place as something so useful most people will find they want to use it.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=135899

Virgin Mobile Wants Greater Share of Prepaid Mobile Market

Presumably first quarter financial results will show continued growth in uptake of prepaid wireless plans in the U.S. mobile market. Virgin Mobile USA

hopes to capitalize on the trend, as it has cut its unlimited calling plan from $80 to $50 a month.

Two of Virgin's other monthly calling plans also get a price cut. The 300-anytime minute plan was cut to $30 from $35. The 400 anytime minutes plan was reduced from $50 to $40.

Text-only plans also are offered: the new Texter's Delight plan costs $15 a month for 1000 messagesa month. An unlimited texting plan is available for $20. Those plans include photo, instant messaging and video messages as well as SMS. Voice calls cost 10 cents per minute.

Virgin has also introduced a Pink Slip Protection (PSP) program. To be eligible for PSP, customers must be a Virgin Mobile USA customer for two consecutive months prior to losing a job, and become eligible for state unemployment benefits within 12 months. Virgin Mobile will cover the costs of a plan including taxes and surcharges for up to three months.

IP Voice Innovation Lags Text, Despite GoogleVoice

One is hard pressed to point to new voice apps, beyond integrated text messaging, find-me, follow-up or visual voice mail, that have become mass market IP voice applications. Dialing from a directory or "click to dial" are helpful, but the bigger changes so far are a simple switch to VoIP in place of plain old telephone service.

The next trend is IP voice on mobile devices, where it has to this point been seen in a "voice from PCs or telephone adapters" scenario.

Contrast that with the pace of development in text-based communications, ranging from text messaging to instant messaging to email to blogging to tweeting. One is tempted to conclude that voice innovation is hampered in part because of its relative complexity, relative incremental cost and an underlying shift in the direction of text communications (messaging) overall.

That isn't to say such voice innovation will not occur; simply that it apparently is harder than innovation in the messaging arena.

http://symbianapplications.info/battle-of-the-google-voice-iphone-apps-voicecentral-vs-gv-mobile/

Online Video Viewing Up 2%, Streams Per Viewer Up 7%

Online video viewing was up in March 2009, says Nielsen Online. Unique viewers grew 1.9 percent year over year. Total streams viewed grew 8.7 percent year over year. Streams per viewer grew 6.7 percent and time spent per viewer grew 12.6 percent.

The central question here is whether linear TV can survive a shift to online viewing. So far, the evidence suggests that the rush to online video “screens” hasn’t necessarily hurt linear TV. At least not yet.

We'll know a bit more once all the first quarter 2009 reports are in, but as of the fourth quarter 2008 there was a net addition of  441,000 subscribers to multi-channel TV services, compared to the start of 2008.

Still, there is no shortage of thinking about how long this can continue.

Building an Ad-Supported Text Messaging Business

Many observers think communication service providers have got to create new revenue streams in partnership with business partners, rather than basing 100 percent of revenue on end users who pay for communication capabilities.

As always is the case for a developing business based on partnerships, partners will differ about the relative values they are bringing to the relationships, as well as relative revenue splits. Ad-supported text messaging campaigns are no different.

“For advertising-supported SMS, the net revenue per message is $0.004, and the carriers dispute this, but that’s the reality of the business,” says David Oberholzer, Limbo VP. “The model isn’t completely solid, and it’s unrealistic to think the CPMs (cost per thousand) we’ll be able to charge will go up dramatically, so it’s unrealistic for carriers trying to impose these types of per-message fees.

“Even relatively small carrier fees will drive out innovation to other platforms, and that’s already happening—look at all the advertising in iPhone apps,” he says. “If carriers raise costs, then that will be exacerbated.”

All of this will get worked out over time, but the issue illustrates the problem: a new and somewhat experimental new business requires nurturing and some degree of give and take between ecosystem partners.