Wireless Now Driving Broadband Business

It sometimes is hard to keep up with all the changes occurring in the communications business.

"In 2004, Wi-Fi was embryonic, the Motorola Razr was the hot phone, the BlackBerry was
a CEO’s email device, and Apple's most recognizable product was an orange-sicle laptop," says Bret Swanson, president of  Entropy Economics LLC.

The point is that Internet innovation hardly has been a problem, and Swanson is not convinced creating new rules about "packet neutrality" actually would have a neutral impact on potential for further innovation on the facilities side of the Internet business.

But one of the sometimes unnoticed changes is the huge role wireless now plays in the broadband access business. In fact, by some measures wireless now accounts for the majority of bandwidth consumed by U.S. consumers, for example. Not surprisingly, that suggests wireless bandwidth is where key growth will occur over the coming decade as well.

"Wireless carriers invested $100 billion in just the past three years, and the United States vaulted past Europe in fast 3G mobile networks," he says. "Americans enjoy mobile voice prices 60 percent cheaper than foreign peers."

"And the once closed mobile ecosystem is more open, modular and dynamic than ever," he adds. "We estimate that between 2000 and 2008, total U.S. consumer bandwidth grew from just 7.9 terabits per second to 717 terabits per second."

"On a per capita basis, consumer bandwidth grew to almost 3 megabits per second in 2009 from just 28 kilobits per second in 2000," says Swanson.

Between 2000 and 2008, total residential bandwidth grew 54 times; total wireless bandwidth grew 542 times; total consumer bandwidth grew 91 times; residential bandwidth per capita grew 50 times; wireless bandwidth per capita grew 499 times and total consumer bandwidth per capita grew 84 times, for a compound annual growth rate of 74 percent.

Swanson estimates U.S. Internet traffic will continue to rise 50 percent annually through 2015. Cisco estimates wireless data traffic will rise 131 percent per year through 2013. That means hundreds of billions of dollars of new investment will be required.

So the question must be asked: "if network service providers can't design their own networks, offer creative services, or make fair business transactions with vendors, will they invest these massive sums to meet (and drive) demand?" Swanson rhetorically asks.

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Consumer spending surpasses pre-recession peak Economic Report - MarketWatch

Boosted by spending on autos and other durable goods, real U.S. consumer spending increased 0.5 percent in March 2010, at last surpassing the pre-recession peak set in November 2007, the Commerce Department estimates.

After-tax, inflation-adjusted incomes increased 0.2 percent in the month, with transfer payments such as unemployment benefits accounting for much of the gain. The tepid income gains should hamper the economic recovery, economists say.

The latest data confirms the "good news, bad news" nature of the economic recovery: the economy is recovering, but slowly, and with little robustness on the jobs front.

Consumer spending surpasses pre-recession peak Economic Report - MarketWatch

More Twitter Searches than on Bing or Yahoo

As a search engine, Twitter already is bigger than Yahoo or Bing, by some measures. Twitter handles 19 billion searches a month, the company says.

That means Twitter handles five times the queries that Bing handles and about 20 percent of those Google conducts. Twitter cofounder Ev Williams says Twitter does about 600 million queries per day.

Working off comScore figures from December 2009 for worldwide search queries, we have:

Google: 88 billion per month
Twitter: 19 billion per month
Yahoo: 9.4 billion per month
Bing: 4.1 billion per month

Twitter Does 19 Billion Searches Per Month, Beating Yahoo & Bing (Sort Of):

All Video Over the Top in 10 Years?

"The reality is that within the decade, the Internet will become the vehicle for distribution of all digital content, including the video and TV services currently still delivered within the walled garden of proprietary distribution networks, mostly satellite and cable," says Philip Hunter over at BroadbandBreakfast.com. 

The physical network may still be cable or satellite, but it will be an IP-based infrastructure, with the content arriving “over the top” rather than within a walled garden, he argues.  Access to the service will continue to be controlled. However, content providers now will be in direct contact with the end customer, in effect cutting out the broadcast distributor.

"Current TV operators will either morph into Internet service providers, which many are already anyway, or into content providers in their own right," he argues.

BroadbandBreakfast.com: ISPs Struggle to Deliver Video Traffic While Imposing Bandwidth Caps

Apple Sold 1 Million Total iPads, Estimated 300K 3G Models Just This Weekend

 "Apple says it sold its one millionth iPad™ on Friday, just 28 days after its introduction on April 3. iPad users have already downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.

“One million iPads in 28 days—that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers.”"

Apple Sold 1 Million Total iPads, Estimated 300K 3G Models Just This Weekend

Differential Video Experience on 3G iPad

Testers at iLounge say some video delivery applications act differently on an Apple iPad when using the 3G network than they do when the same device is using Wi-Fi access. Specifically, the iPad’s built-in YouTube application strips both standard and HD videos to a dramatically lower resolution over the cellular data connection, something that iTunes Store video previews notably do not do, instead staying at a higher quality and consuming a greater amount of data, iLounge says.

Other third-party applications, such as the ABC Player, refuse to work at all over the cellular connection, producing a notification pop-up that states, “Please connect to a Wi-Fi network to use this application. Cellular networks are not supported at this time.”

But Netflix appears to work fine.

The immediate temptation will be to blame AT&T for the variable performance, but since the applications are executing variably, it seems more likely there are video coding or even playback rights issues at play.

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Mobile Device Sales Surge 22% in First Quarter

The worldwide mobile phone market grew 21.7 percent in the first quarter of 2010, compared to contraction during the first quarter of 2009, when sales plunged 17 percent.

Stronger smartphone demand is part of the reason, says International Data Corporation. Vendors shipped 294.9 million units in the first quarter of 2010 compared to 242.4 million units in the first quarter of 2009.

Growing demand for smartphones also helped Research In Motion (RIM) move into the top-five vendor rankings for the first time. RIM, which replaced Motorola in the top five, tied Sony Ericsson for the number four position.

Annual sales are expected to up 11 percent, globally. The top-five suppliers include Nokia, Samsung, LG Electronics, Research In Motion and Sony Ericsson.