House Caps Mobile Taxes at 16.3%

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a five-year freeze on any new state and local taxes targeted at cellphones and other wireless services, including wireless broadband access. 


Wireless customers now pay 16.3 percent in taxes and fees, more than double the average rates for other goods and services. 



Supporters of the legislation say states increasingly have taxed wireless mobile services as they have become more prevalent, and that most states now impose taxes that far exceed average sales taxes on other items. House OKs lid on cellphone taxes

Google Tries to Provide More Ad Transparency

"Because ads should be just as useful as any other information on the web, we try to make them as relevant as possible for you," says Susan Wojcicki, Google SVP, Advertising. Over the coming weeks, users will be able to learn more about ads served up to you by clicking the "Why these ads" link next to ads on Google search results and Gmail.


When you click the “Why these ads” link, you’ll find information about why you’re seeing a particular ad and how it’s personalized for you. If you’re searching for a local restaurant while you’re on vacation in Hawaii, you would see ads for restaurants that are nearby, rather than restaurants in your hometown.

"Why these ads?":

U.S. Mobile Banking Grows 21% in 6 Months

There's a big difference between mobile banking in the United States, and mobile banking in many other countries of the developing world. In the U.S. market, mobile banking is mostly about offering consumers convenience and operating a bank at lower cost. In developing markets, mobile banking is primarily about the basic ability to transfer money safely and reliably between two people, or between a consumer bank account and a recipient organization.

In basic terms, in the U.S. market, mobile banking is about checking balances and moving funds between accounts. It is expected to become quite a bit more transaction oriented over time, but for the moment, it largely is a matter of information retrieval, with the modest addition of ability to move funds between a user's accounts.

Nearly 14 percent of the total U.S. mobile audience (32.5 million users) used mobile banking services in June 2011, up 21 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010.

Mobile credit card services saw an even greater increase, with 18.4 million mobile users accessing credit card information, up 23 percent from December 2010. Mobile auto and property insurance services also exhibited strong gains as 7.2 million mobile users accessed insurance information on their devices, a 19-percent increase. Mobile Banking App Usage in the U.S. Increases 45%

Mobile Financial Services Usage 3 Month Avg. Ending June 2011 vs. December 2010 Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
Mobile Financial Services CategoryAccessed in the Past Month	Unique Mobile Audience (000)
	Dec-2010	Jun-2011	Percent Change
Banking Information	26,765	32,451	21%
Credit Card Information	14,931	18,356	23%
Auto or Property Insurance Information	6,041	7,169	19%
Brokerage or Stock Information	8,695	9,576	10%

Clearwire to Stop Selling Sprint 3G

Clearwire has stopped offering postpaid plans to new customers and will no longer sell dual-mode WiMAX/3G devices that use Sprint's CDMA network. Sprint, for its part, says it will not sell Clearwire WiMAX phones after 2012. Clearwire dumps Sprint 3G


The moves clearly point to a shift by both carriers to Long Term Evolution. Sprint's shift away from WiMAX, and Clearwire's shift away from 3G both mean each carrier is free to emphasize Long Term Evolution services expected to be offered on both networks as the "preferred" 4G network, going forward. 

Sprint Nextel Corp. says it will stop selling phones and other devices compatible with Clearwire Corp.'s network at the end of 2012, as it switches customers to its own Long Term Evolution network. 


It is possible to paint the picture as a sign of deteriorating relations between Sprint and Clearwire, but a shift to 4G and LTE is the real meaning of the changes. Sprint is carving out LTE capacity from its own 3G spectrum, while Clearwire needs to build an entirely new LTE network using spectrum it might otherwise devote to WiMAX. 


Also, as Clearwire shifts away from a dual role as both a wholesaler of capacity and a retail brand, it has to be cognizant of what its wholesale customers want, and Sprint, Clearwire's top customer, clearly is signaling it wants LTE plus CDMA to be the preferred "dual mode" approach it prefers. 


The irony is that Sprint owns a majority of Clearwire. Sprint to halt WiMAX sales

Smart Phone Data Consumption Grows 427% on "Three" Network

U.K. mobile service provider Three says 97 percent of all the traffic on its network is data.

Also, since June 2010 and September 2011, there has been a 427 percent increase in data usage on Three, by smart phone customers.

  Data is 97% of Three traffic

How Much Will Tablets Drive Mobile Bandwidth Consumption?

Goldman Sachs figures tablet data consumption is increasing by 30 percent per year and by 2020 will account for 17 percent of all mobile data demand.

“We expect global tablet sales to grow over 300 percent through 2012,” Goldman’s analysts say. “Our forecast implies a 42 percent compound annual growth rate from 2010 to 2020 in network-activated tablet subscribers (tablets that actually subscribe to a wireless data plan) with monthly data usage assumed to grow at the rate of 30 percent per year from 1.5 GBytes month to over 20 GBytes per month in 2020,” Goldman analysts say.

That implies some future adjustment of mobile broadband plans, which at present tend to cap consumption at 4Gbytes to 10 Gbytes a month, with an average of about 5 Gbytes. Though it seems unlikely that smart phone consumption will reach those levels, tablet users using mobile broadband connections might easily exceed 5 Gbytes a month, if the Goldman estimates are correct.

How Much Will Tablets Drive Mobile Bandwidth Consumption?

Mobile VoIP About to Explode?

Mobile VoIP Forecast

Mobile VoIP subscribers will grow from 47 million in 2010 to almost 410 million by 2015, Infonetics Research forecasts. That is not a good thing for service providers.


Mobile service providers globally earn about $500 billion a year providing voice services.


In 2010, mobile operators made $13.21 per user, per year, from mobile VoIP services. That works out to about $1.10 per user, per month, demonstrating how little revenue there is to be made from over-the-top mobile VoIP services. Mobile VoIP forecast.


Consider that, even after a 20 percent decline over the last three years, monthly average mobile revenue is about $27.77 a month. That points out the complicated business impact of IP telephony and VoIP. 


So what happens if 363 million more mobile VoIP users are active by 2015? Assume the same revenue metrics for the additional 363 million mobile VoIP users, which is $13.21 per user, per year, compared to a typical payment of $27.77 a month for legacy voice services, or $333.24 a year.


If the 410 million mobile VoIP subscribers use nothing but VoIP, they would spend $131 billion less with mobile service providers than they used to.


That suggests a loss of about 26 percent of total mobile service provider revenue in four years. Mobile VoIP About to Explode?