DirecTV to Offer 10 Mbps Satellite Broadband

DirecTV has announced partnerships with ViaSat and Hughes' HughesNet to offer satellite-delivered broadband access services across the United States at speeds of 10 Mbps or more. That might be significant to the extent that it means virtually any rural household will have immediate access to 10 Mbps broadband access, without the need for additional construction or capital investment. 


The move by DirecTV illustrates the use case for satellite-delivered broadband, namely its ability to rapidly and efficiently provide broadband access in rural areas at vastly lower cost, immediately, to isolated households.


Not all policy advocates will be completely happy with potential speeds or retail pricing. But it is hard to argue that there are more-efficient ways to invest capital for the purposes of providing broadband access to the three percent or so of the "hardest to serve" households in the United States. 

Verizon Wireless Expects Slight Revenue Dilution From Family Mobile Data Plans

One major reason Verizon Wireless is launching family or multi-device mobile data plans in the summer of 2012 is that “we have kind of constrained the marketplace now around connecting more devices because everybody thinks, well, if I connect that device, I now have to buy an additional data plan with that that has its own tiered pricing with it,” Fran Shammo, Verizon Communications CFO says.

“If I can add as many devices as I want and share that data plan, that is a lot more efficient from a family share perspective, from a small-business perspective,” Shammo says. “And I think at least where I sit and I look at that, I say to myself, okay, there is a large ramp of devices out there that, especially when you think about families, they are not connecting those devices because
of the incremental cost in the model we have today.”

But Verizon believes it is “not going to take a huge revenue dilution” when it launches the plan. That probably means a belief that average revenue per unit might dip, but that more units will be sold.

1/3 of New Netflix Customers are Returning Subscribers

Netflix CFO David Wells says about a third of "new" subscribers joining Netflix actually are former subscribers who are returning. 


"Rejoined or folks rejoining the service still remain about a third of our new subscribers that are coming in," Wells says. "We've said before that the brand hit will take years to recover from and I think that's still true, with the bulk of the recovery coming in the full year and I think we still feel that way,"

Telcos and Cable are Not "Platforms"

The fight over the TV is really a fight over the next massive consumer platform that is coming up for grabs. Of platforms there are few: Google owns search, Amazon owns digital retail, Facebook owns social, and Apple owns consumer devices. Microsoft owns, well, nothing at the moment, despite its handsome revenue stream from Windows and Office, argues James McQuivey of Forrester Research.

But Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is already the most-watched net-connected TV device in the United States and soon, the world. With more than 70 million consoles in households worldwide, as many as half of them connected to the Internet, depending on the country, Microsoft can rapidly drive new video services into tens of millions of households, McQuivey argues.

Significantly missing from those lists of platforms are cable or telco access service providers. At least for the moment, telcos and cable operators are not "platforms."

88% of All Mobile Apps are Part of Android or iOS Ecosystems

Some 12 months ago, fewer than 40 percent of mobile subscribers in the United States had smart phones. In early 2012, that percentage has grown to at least 50 percent. That, in turn, is going to have implications for use of mobile apps and bandwidth consumption, at the very least. 

Much of the activity will continue to be driven by the Android and iOS ecosystems.

Of smart phone owners who have downloaded an app at any point in the last 30 days,  88 percent are part of either the iOS or Android ecosystems, Nielsen reports. 

In just a year, the average number of apps per smartphone has grown 28 percent, from 32 apps  per user to 41 apps per user. 

In addition, mobile app users are spending more time with apps than browser experiences, some 10 percent more than last year, Nielsen says. 

Some things haven’t changed, however. The top five apps continue to be Facebook, YouTube, Android Market, Google Search, and Gmail. 

Apple's iPhone screen to grow to 4 or 5 inches?

As much as many people love their iPhones, the screen size has come to seem a bit cramped as other manufacturers have introduced larger-screen models. Apple has in the past said there are reasons larger screens haven't been offered. 


The form factor for Apple's "retina display" has been among the arguments for the 3.5-inch screen. 


A new device could use a 1024 x 768 panel which is the same resolution as the company’s first two iPads and works out to 320 pixels per inch. 


That would allow a 4-inch iPhone to natively run all of the existing iPad applications that aren’t optimized for the new iPad, which is double the resolution in both directions. 


So larger screens might be coming in the next version of the iPhone, the Wall Street Journal reports. 


The new displays are said to measure four inches in diagonal, up from the 3.5 inches on previous versions of the iPhone, sources say. 


Apple has in the past defended the screen size as necessary for a good "one-handed" user experience. Those of you already using four-inch screens know navigation with a single thumb can be harder on a bigger screen. 


That might be true, but smart phones these days function as content consumption devices, not just "phones," and there, a bigger screen is better.

Smart Phones for Medical Diagnosis

Some industry verticals tend to be lead adopters of new technology, while others tend to lag. Historically, the financial sector has lead adoption of most new technologies. Medical segments tend to lag. But smart phones, sensor and apps might change that.

And that is one reason e-health tends to get attention from communications service providers. Use of a standard smart phone as a medical sensor could dramatically change the adoption profile.

That’s the vision of a team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology. Led by Nate Lewis, a chemist, the team is developing an e-nose that can sense chemical vapors and enable diagnosis, says Technology Reports.