Verizon Buys Hughes Telematics, a "Real" M2M Business

Verizon Communications is acquing Hughes Telematics, a supplier of automotive location-based services including sensor and telemetry services, vehicle diagnostics, GPS tracking and emissions monitoring system for wireless fleet vehicle management.


A majority owned subsidiary of HTI, Lifecomm, also plans to offer mobile personal emergency response services through a wearable lightweight device with one-touch access to emergency assistance.


The transaction will expand Verizon's capabilities in the automotive and fleet telematics marketplace and accelerate growth in key vertical segments, including emerging machine-to-machine (M2M) services.


This is important for Verizon since machine-to-machine services are expected to be a key growth driver for mobile service providers. Also, M2M services such as these are the "real" M2M revenue sources, though many consider services for  "connected devices" such as tablets to be part of the "M2M" business.


That definition is used by the GSM Association, for example. Some of us consider connected devices and M2M to be separate markets. 

Video Gets Watched on PCs at Work, on Tablets at Home

Tablet video viewing rises on weekday mornings as people prepare for the day and commute to work, then falls off during work hours as PC viewing picks up. 


On weekday evenings, tablet video surges as people watch streaming video to end their day. 


A third of tablet video plays occur between 7pm and 11pm, while only about 17 percent of PC plays take place over that same window. Ooyala says. 


It is only an incipient trend, but a trend, nevertheless: tablets are becoming a prime time vehicle for watching video. 

AT&T Mulls Upgrading Rural Lines Without New Fiber

AT&T has about 15 million lines in rural areas that company management might have preferred to sell, but the company apparently cannot find buyers. So AT&T now is considering a plan to upgrade those lines, Bloomberg reports. 


In a possibly-significant move, AT&T apparently is looking at ways to upgrade the all-copper lines without installing new optical fiber in the transport portions of the access network, using IP Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexers. 


Two decades ago, before mobility became the growth engine for the global telecom industry, it might have seemed inevitable that fiber "to where you can make money" was the future. These days, the problem is that the "fiber to where you can make money" equation has changed for the worse. 


If AT&T can figure out how to upgrade all-copper lines using only new DSLAMs, that would be a major innovation, as the business case for U-verse or fiber to the home in its rural areas is beyond challenging. 

“Extreme” Shoppers Use Mobiles Throughout Purchase Process

Among consumers with a smartphone or tablet, 50 percent used a mobile device to compare prices while shopping, 44 percent looked for a coupon, 33 percent  "liked” a retailer on Facebook, and 17 percent bought a product using an app, a new study by GfK shows.

In addition, nearly one-fourth of mobile-enabled shoppers have used brick-and-mortar stores for "showrooming,” checking out a product in person, and then purchasing it online.

Younger adults – ages 18 to 34 – are the primary drivers of these mobile shopping behaviors; these consumers are more than three times as likely to report using a smartphone or tablet for shopping (34 percent compared to 10 percent), compared to those ages 50 to 64.    

Mobile Bandwidth is Different from Untethered Bandwidth

Traffic from wireless devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2016, Cisco forecasts. It is a shocking prediction, but has to be put into context.

In 2016, wired devices will account for 39 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 61 percent of IP traffic. In 2011, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 55 percent, Cisco says.

But you have to put those figures into context. Cisco clearly is pointing out the growing role played by untethered (no wired connection) and mobile (a mobile network connection) appliances as generators of bandwidth demand. 

Globally, mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold between 2011 and 2016, Cisco says. Mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78 percent between 2011 and 2016, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month by 2016.

Also, global mobile data traffic will grow three times faster than fixed IP traffic from 2011 to 2016. 

Global mobile data traffic was two percent of total IP traffic in 2011, and will be 10 percent of total IP traffic in 2016.

One of the key observations is the difference between tethered Wi-Fi and mobile access. If 61 percent of all traffic is created by untethered and mobile devices, while 10 percent of demand is driven by mobile devices, then it is fairly obvious that Wi-Fi-based use of the fixed networks could represent half of all bandwidth demand, down about five percent since 

In other words,untethered devices--including mobile devices in Wi-Fi mode--become the key drivers of overall Internet demand.

What remains a bit less clear is how device roles will change as video consumption on untethered and mobile devices begins to underpin total consumption. 

At the end of 2011, 78 percent of IP traffic and 94 percent of consumer Internet traffic originated from PCs.

By 2016, 31 percent of IP traffic and 19 percent of consumer Internet traffic will originate from non-PC devices).

One suspects the portion of traffic created by untethered devices of all sorts will be higher than that in many developed regions. 

As in the case of mobile networks, video devices can have a multiplier effect on traffic

An Internet-enabled high-definition television that draws 30 minutes of content per day from the Internet would generate as much Internet traffic as an entire household today.

U.S. Cable Operators Get 75% of First Quarter 2012 Broadband Adds

The seventeen largest U.S. cable and telephone providers acquired 1.3 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers in the first quarter of 2012. 

The top cable companies have more than 45.3 million broadband subscribers, and top telephone companies having over 34.6 million subscribers.

The top cable companies added about 980,000 subscribers, representing 75 percent of the net broadband additions for the quarter, compared to the top telephone companies.

The top cable broadband providers have a 57 percent share of the overall market, with about 10.7 million more subscribers than the top telephone companies, compared to 8.9 million more a year ago

Broadband Internet Provider	Subscribers at End of 1Q 2012	Net Adds in 1Q 2012
Cable Companies
Comcast	18,582,000	439,000
Time Warner^	11,136,000	227,000
Cox*	4,530,000	30,000
Charter	3,802,000	147,000
Cablevision	3,007,000	42,000
Suddenlink	982,600	31,200
Mediacom	887,000	36,000
Cable ONE	463,443	12,361
Other Major Private Cable Companies**	1,941,000	16,000
Total Top Cable	45,331,043	980,561
Telephone Companies
AT&T	16,530,000	103,000
Verizon	8,774,000	104,000
CenturyLink	5,643,000	89,000
Frontier^^	1,746,000	11,000
Windstream	1,363,800	8,500
FairPoint	318,510	4,375
Cincinnati Bell	257,200	(100)
Total Top Telephone Companies	34,632,510	319,775
Total Broadband	79,963,553	1,300,336

Netflix Enables Wi-Fi-Only iOS Mode

Updated player on iPhone

The latest version of the Netflix mobile app for iOS devices allows users to disable mobile network use to watch Netflix content. The new video player for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch has a more consistent look and feel across PC and mobile devices.

Netflix also has added an option to its features settings menu so users can choose to allow streaming from Netflix only when connected to a Wi-Fi network.


That feature will help users manage their bandwidth buckets, while also allowing mobile use of the Netflix streaming feature.


People are smart enough to figure out they should watch streaming video when at home, using their fixed network bandwidth.


That is increasingly congruent with user behavior, as more users are watching their tablets and even smart phones during the standard "prime time" video viewing hours.