Is there a business model for mobile TV?

The number of mobile TV users continues to grow but there is still no proven business model so far to market the service, researchers at Infocom say.

"Japan, South Korea and Italy are the leading markets for broadcast-based mobile TV services but mobile TV subscriber growth in these markets is driven mainly by free or partly-free access and rather large handset availability, Infocom says.

Much could change with time, but there are some features and services for which there is in fact no apparent stand alone business model. Consider the Wi-Fi hotspot business. For an increasing number of service providers, the business model is fixed broadband, and Wi-Fi access is simply an added feature of the broadband service.

The same thing appears to be happening in the multi-channel video business, as service providers test the idea of "TV Everywhere," where paying for a fixed video subscription also allows access to video from PCs and mobile phones.

Advertising might help, but possibly not as much as people suppose. At this point, it appears possible that the mobile TV business model is fixed network multi-channel video, much as Wi-Fi now is a feature available to broadband access subscribers.

Can Open Access FTTH Work?

Open access can work for fiber to home access, says Yankee Group analyst Benoît Felten.

Most observers might tend to agree that the thesis works better in countries without robust cable TV broadband penetration, where construction costs are high and where regulators allow a reasonable rate of return on wholesale activities.

Felton argues a wholesale approach does not reduce overall take rates or average revenue per user for the network owne, an assumption that obviously makes better sense where virtually all retailers use a single access network.

"When DSL networks started opening in Europe in 2002 to 2005, although there was often a small impact on the incumbent’s ARPU in the early stages, that ARPU climbed back to its pre-unbundling levels within a few years due to offer differentiation and the development of value-added services.

Incumbent retail market share of course drops. Felton notes that very few incumbents in Europe currently have less than 50 percent market share of broadband, and there is little reason to think that opening the DSL network has impacted their ARPU or penetration negatively.

What is different about U.S. markets, however, is that cable competitors have their own, ubiquitous networks, with a majority of market share for video and broadband access services, with growing voice share. For this reason, U.S. incumbent telcos cannot hope to serve perhaps half of all retail broadband or video providers, and perhaps 20 percent to 25 percent of all voice retailers.

"What we are saying is that our economic analysis suggests that having more than one fiber infrastructure in the ground is hard to sustain," says Felton.

Social Networking Now Nearly Universal

More than 80 percent of online Americans are active in either creating, participating in, or reading some form of social content at least once a month, say researchers at Forrester Research.

About 24 percent of online users create content, while 37 percent post responses. About 21 percent use real simple syndication. Some 51 percent maintain personal profiles. Fully 73 percent of online users read blogs, watch online videos or listen to podcasts.

Among online users 35 or younger, social networking is nearly universal, with 90 percent participating in some way. Among those 55 and over, about 66 percent now are participating.

AT&T will Mandate Smart Phone Data Plans Sept. 6, 2009

Beginning September 6, 2009, AT&T will mandate subscribers who activate or upgrade to a smartphone to also pick up a data plan. One might argue that a smart phone without a data plan is about as useful as a PC without an Internet connection, or a TV without access to a multi-channel video plan.

Beyond that, as the mobile industry transitions to a revenue model based on data plans, not voice, the move is to be expected. There is no inherent reason why the cost of access to the global network, which increasingly includes Web services, should be based on use of voice applications.

On the other hand, users who simply want access to voice or text messaging only need phones with that basic level of functionality.

Will AT&T Wireless Support VoIP?

For Apple and Google, the recent inquiry by the Federal Communications Commission into VoIP blocking on iPhones and Android devices is a reminder that the communications business is rather more suscepible to political pressure than the software business.

For AT&T the inquiries are just part of the background of doing business, but AT&T's response to the FCC inquiry suggests that what typically happens, will happen again. Namely, when regulators decide it is time to do something, market contestants typically try to head off more onerous rules by making voluntary business decisions that reduce the need for such rules.

So it is that AT&T now says "we plan to take a fresh look at possibly authorizing VoIP capabilities on the iPhone for use on AT&T’s 3G network," says Jim Cicconi AT&T Services senior EVP.

That doesn't guarantee clearance for unlimited VoIP use on AT&T mobiles, but it is a sure sign AT&T does not want to regulated into such a position.

Google Voice for Active Duty Military Now Available

Any active U.S. service member with a .mil email address can sign up for a Google Voice account at and start using the free service within a day. It's a good thing.

Google Says Skype Not Blocked on Android Phones

As Apple now it admits it alone was responsible for the initial rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone, and AT&T reaffirms that it had no say in the decision, Google has found itself in a bit of the same position as Apple, as Android mobiles are alleged to use a "less than fully functional" version of Skype on Android devices.

Some have suggested that Skype had been similarly blocked from Android phones, but the issue really is the functionality of Skype on Android devices. Google says on its blog that the Android operating system did not, at first release, support any full-featured VoIP applications.

That now has been rectified, Google says. That said, both Apple and Android devices are subject to any existing carrier policies on use of VoIP over their mobile networks, though it does not appear any such policies are involved either in the initial attempt to make Google Voice available on the iPhone, or the initial attempt to get a full-fledged version of Skype running on Android devices.