AT&T's New Data Plans Will Save Most People Money

BillShrink co-founder & CEO Schwark Satyavolu says AT&T's new data pricing plan is a good thing. Customers will now have the option to save hundreds of dollars over the course of their 2-year contract, and it's just an issue of figuring out how much data you use.

Plus, the cheaper plans could send iPhone and BlackBerry sales through the roof.
However, pricing could be an issue in the future if data usage continues to increase at the rate it has been over the past year and a half.

Here's How AT&T's New Data Pricing Plans Will Save Most People Money

Will Reclassification Derail FCC's Broadband Plan?

Some at the top level of the Federal Communications Commission may believe a new legal framework for its authority over broadband services will help keep its ambitious National Broadband Plan afloat, but some cable industry policy pundits wonder if the move might produce the opposite effect.

The FCC's reclassification effort could 'totally sidetrack the Commission from getting some pieces of the broadband plan done,' warned Steve Morris, VP and associate general of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

Light Reading Cable - Broadband - Will Reclassification Derail FCC's Broadband Plan? - Telecom News Analysis

Title II: Regulated Dumb Pipe is the Polcy: Consumer Welfare is the Issue

Since the greatest service provider fear is that of being reduced to a "dumb pipe" provider of commodity access service, it is drop dead simple to see why most facilities-based providers will oppose the Federal Communications Commission attempt to regulate broadband access as a common carrier access service with no permissible traffic shaping.

Application providers are right to fear unfair business advantage, which would be the case if ISPs decided to block lawful applications or apply differentiated quality measures to their own Internet traffic, while denying such prioritization and quality measures to business partners or competing applications.

Any number of issues present themselves, ranging from the legal (whether the FCC has authority to proceed as it intends) to the likely impact on investment in new and upgraded access facilities (less investment, not more) to impact on innovation.

Some would say the FCC is attempting to regulate "ex ante," before a problem exists, rather than tackling any issues as they arise. The factual record suggests only two examples of blocking, sufficiently chastening the entire industry into agreeing that indeed, all lawful applications must be allowed.

The big problem is how networks can be managed under conditions of congestion so as to preserve quality of experience, and there the difference between traffic shaping and "blocking" is technically quite difficult to separate. All voice networks, for example, use blocking techniques at times of peak congestion to preserve service quality. Data networks have many more options.

Some types of lower-priority traffic might reasonably be slowed down to allow higher-priority traffic types to get preferential treatment, especially video and voice traffic that are highly suscepitble to delay.

Such measures also are crucial for new services of the sort businesses routinely enjoy, where users can buy features allowing them to set their own priorities for some types of applications. In a regime where absolutely no prioritization is allowed, it would not be legal for an ISP to create and sell a service that provides higher continuity for tele-medicine, video or voice services, for example.

"Dumbing down" access networks by prohibiting any packet prioritization automatically prevents creation of quality-assured services, even if end users want them.

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U.S. Online Spending up 11% in 2010

U.S. online ad spending looks to be up nearly 11 percent from 2009.

Does Anybody Really Believe a "Small" Number of Title II Rules Will Hold, Long Term?

The Federal Communications Commission's press release on opening its notice of inquiry on Title II common carrier classification of broadband access services will leave many service providers a bit queasy. For starters, the rules almost certainly will apply to cable companies, which never have been regulated, in any way, as "common carriers."

Secondly, even if the FCC promises some lighter-touch "third way," once Title II rules are established as the framework, there is no formal barrier to later changes in rules that would apply more than a "small number" of Title II rules. Nobody familiar with government logic and practice will feel safe that the promised forbearance will hold over the long term.

Taxes and rules get instituted in modest ways, for specific purposes, and then never "sunset." Over time, in the case of taxes, amounts keep creeping up. Over time, in the case of administrative or legal requirements, old rules continue to drift out of date with changed circumstances.

Nor will the actual language provide much comfort. The FCC says it wants to fundamentally alter broadband access regulation, but will "forbear," at its own discretion, from applying all the common carrier rules, "other than the small number that are needed to implement fundamental universal service, competition and market entry, and consumer protection policies."

Not many observers think, over the long term, that the number of rules will remain "small." Where else in federal government action have you seen rules become less numerous over time?

Once Title II is the new framework, any number of steps, including price regulation, entry regulation and other rules are possible. In a nutshell, what was best about the old, highly-regulated monopoly system was service quality and universal access. What was worst was high prices and low rates of innovation.

Under competitive conditions the effect of common carrier regulation is mixed. We are likely to see both low prices and low innovation, plus less investment.

Verizon already earns 70 percent of its cash from operations, not wireline, and the balance continually is shifting to wireless. With lower likely return from wired operations, rational operators will simply starve the wired networks and invest more heavily in wireless.

The problem is that wireline service as a whole is becoming less profitable, and providing less revenue. You don't help matters by making it less profitable, and creating less revenue. You only accelerate its decline.

Facebook 2009 Revenue Was Almost $800 Million

Facebook’s revenue in 2009 was nearly $800 million, and the company turned a part of it into a solid net profit, according to Reuters. That's a big deal for a company that, for the longest time, had no obvious long-term revenue model.

The number is significantly higher than earlier estimates of $500 million revenue in 2009, and even the projected $710 million revenue in 2010. Facebook, as usual, declines to comment on any of these numbers, but sometime in 2009. Facebook seems to have became cash-flow positive.

Facebook 2009 Revenue Was Almost $800 Million [REPORT

How Does iPad Affect Smartphone Browsing?

For people who keep track of statistics such as smartphone operating system market share, device behavior and trends, the iPad and other tablets are going to complicate matters. Should these devices be tracked with smartphones, with PCs, or as a separate category.

Some might argue a tablet is like a smartphone, and should be included in smartphone stats, if the same operating systems are used for both the tablet and smartphone devices. Others will argue that will distort the smartphone data.

So far, it seems iPad usage is someplace between PC and smartphone usage, perhaps suggesting it might be a separate category.

"Among the 14 percent of our iPhone client users who use an iPad, their average session length is 12 percent longer than the average iPod Touch or iPhone users," says Kate Sellers Blatt, iPass director. Some other data suggest iPad owners use the Internet more than they do on their smartphones, but still far less than on their PCs.

Morgan Stanley estimates that iPad browsing activity already is greater than BlackBerry or Android smartphone activity, on a global basis.

If casual and anecdotal evidence is any indicator, most people use their iPads quite heavily in indoor environments, on couches, for example. Mobile devices also are used indoors, sometimes as much as half the time. But there are some indications iPad use is indoors as much as 90 percent of the time.

For the moment, I think it is more useful to consider tablets a separate category from smartphones or PCs, at least for tracking purposes.

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