Bandwidth and Revenue: What Does History Suggest?

Service provider executives often worry about a restricted future role in the Internet ecosystem, largely captured by the phrase "dumb pipe." Somewhat oddly, you sometimes hear people complain that the phrase exists at all, as though anything at all would be different did the phrase not exist.

Left unsaid is the truth behind the existence of the phrase. Bandwidth is not the only product that has experienced dramatic effective cost reductions, with large societal and economic benefits, as troublesome as those price changes might have been for producers in the businesses that experienced the changes.

The so-called "robber barons" of the late 19th century generally made their fortunes by drastically changing the price curve for new technologies, grabbing market share by undercutting rivals.

Cornelius Vanderbilt cut the price of rail freight 90 percent, Andrew Carnegie slashed steel prices 75 percent and John D. Rockefeller cut oil prices 80 percent between 1870 and 1900.

Malcom McLean, Sam Walton and Michael Dell did roughly the same for container shipping, discount retailing and home computing a century later. Such radical changes often are unwelcome by the producing community, though the consuming public benefits.

Something of that same process is likely to play out in the bandwidth business as well, no matter what one thinks about the term "dumb pipe."

Cheapening Technology WSJ.com (subscription required)

Groupon, Living Social Skew Urban

Demography might not be destiny, but it is close. The places there are lots of people are the same places there are lots of small businesses, lots of mobile phone users, lots of everything, in fact.

As is the case for just about anything else related to people and business, the places there are dense concentrations of buyers are the places there are equally-dense concentrations of suppliers.

For that reason, the typical Groupon and Living Social user, in fact, is about 13 percent more likely to live in a metropolitan area with a population of more than 400,000 people, according to Nielsen Co. data, and about 10 percent more likely to live in a city with more than three million people.

Those aren't huge disparities, or even surprising. Where are the places it will make most sense for a local retailer to pitch offers at people? Where are there enough retailers to support a business offering coupons and offers?

Groupon, Living Social Are Skewing Urban

16 Million Mobile LTE Subscribers by End of 2012

Currently 12 countries have commercial Long Term Evolution fourth generation services, and according to ABI Research VP of Forecasting Jake Saunders, by the end of the year there will be some 16 million subscribers using LTE mobile devices, globally.

But there might be 264 million LTE subscribers on frequency-division LTE networks by 2015, and another 158 million time-division network customers by 2015, according to Heavy Reading.

16 Million Mobile LTE Subscribers by Year’s End

17% of Smart Phone Users Checking In

About 17 percent of mobile users appear to use social location-based apps such as Foursquare or Facebook Places, according to a study commissioned by digital agency Beyond.

More than half of mobile users who do use checkin apps (54 percent) said they are motivated to share their location when discounts are involved. About 21 percent said the ability to earn badges and status rewards were enough motivation for them to check in.

About 48 percent of respondents who say they do not use mobile check-in apps indicate privacy is their primary reason for not doing so.

About half of respondents were unable to do so because they do not have a smart phone.

Early adopters are more likely to check in at locations that sell food or drinks. The top places are restaurants (53 percent), coffee shops (40 percent), hotels (38 percent) and bars (36 percent).

Mass consumers check in most frequently at the homes of friends and family (35 percent) and restaurants (33 percent)

Why Mobile Users Aren't Checking In

Can You Measure Social Media ROI?

There's nothing wrong with trying to quantify the return on any investment, including social media, even if the analysis is relatively difficult to assess. The danger might come from trying to be too quantitative.

For one thing, the measures are proximate, not direct. It would be very difficult, most likely impossible, to quantify the volume or number of sales or revenue that social channels directly convert. We can track web traffic, click through rates, and follower/following ratio. But none of that explains real "influence."

Social media isn't the only channel with those sorts of issues. It is difficult to assess the actual value of trade show events, as well, since "sales" tend to come some time after a contact at a trade show.

The methodological dangers are fairly clear, as well. "If you utilize offline social events as advertising channels, two things happen," argues Joe Hall at Marketing Pilgrim. "You don’t make any friends" and "you don’t create any customers."

"This happens because instead of coming across as the cool girl or guy that everyone wants to do business with, you come across as the annoying jerk passing out postcard adverts."

There will always be management pressure to justify the effectiveness of campaigns and channels. When using social media, the great temptation is to rely on proxy measures too heavily. What you are after is "influence." That can be tough to measure.

Social Media ROI?

Local Mobile Marketing Spend to Grow 2.5X by 2015

Total U.S mobile promotional spend in 2010 shows a pronounced focus on national., rather than local, campaigns, according to Mobitrove. Almost $2.9 billion of $3 billion worth of "promotions" spending was for national promotions, or about 97 percent of mobile promotional dollars spent in 2010.

One suspects that is going to change over the next several years, as social shopping capabilities and focus starts to grow. The changes might be quite gradual for the first four to five years, as typically is the case when a new business segment gets traction.

After five years, growth is likely to be substantial, as retailers learn how to use local promotions with location services and social networking.

Mobile Marketing Spend to Sextuple 2010-2015:

Over the Air Updates: Ecosystem Implications

Just about everything in the mobile ecosystem seems to have business model implications. Consider the way mobile devices get updated.

Apple has used the iTunes to push updates to its iOS mobile devices. When a new software update is available, users have to tether to a PC to load the update onto their mobiles.

When an update to Google’s Android operating system or HP/Palm’s webOS is released, users are provided an update notification and can update the software right on their phone.

You might argue that the "tether to PC" model was forced by the relatively primitive nature of the iPod, which established the practice. On the other hand, lots of people have noticed the curiosity of the need to connect an iPad to a PC to configure the tablet.

Oddly, Apple has been saying the iPad "is not a PC." Requiring a PC to activate every tablet might illustrate that in a sort of negtive way: the tablet update strategy isn't smart enough to allow a natively mobile device to update over the air.

But Apple appears to be readying over-the-air iOS updates, starting in the fall of 2011, for updates to iOS 5 devices.

The business model implications of the over-the-air updating are that it appears Apple has to come to agreement Verizon Wireless and AT&T about how to support the wireless updates.

That points out the subtle, but real gatekeeper functions mobile service providers continue to possess in the mobile ecosystem.

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