Top Mobile Service Providers Globally

China’s three mobile operators all recorded double-digit subscriber growth over the last year, strengthening their respective standings in the latest Wireless Intelligence Wireless Intelligence ‘Scoreboard’ operator ranking.

China Mobile extended its lead as the world’s largest operator group, growing connections by 11 percent year-on-year to 683.1 million. Its two domestic rivals both moved up the ranking compared to a year ago - and all three now feature in the top ten for the first time.

China Unicom moved up one place on the back of a 21 percent increase connections to 219.3 million, while China Telecom climbed two places as connections increased 33 percent to 144.2 million.

China as a whole surpassed the one billion milestone earlier in the year. 

Rank	Operator-group	Connections (millions) 1	YoY Growth, connections	YoY Growth, rank	Mobile Revenue (US$ billion)
1	China Mobile	683.08	11%	-	22.05
2	Vodafone Group	386.88	5%	-	13.92
3	América Móvil Group	251.83	7%	-	7.98
4	Bharti Airtel Group	250.04	13%	+1	3.04
5	Telefónica Group	243.51	7%	-1	11.40
6	China Unicom	219.25	21%	+1	4.95
7	VimpelCom Group 2	205.05	7%	-1	4.58
8	Reliance Communications	154.60	8%	-	0.48
9	Telenor Group	152.74	24%	-	2.55
10	China Telecom	144.18	33%	+2	3.37
11	MTN Group	136.59	14%	-1	3.85
12	France Telecom Group	133.38	57%	+9	7.18
13	Telkomsel Group	117.24	15%	+2	1.43
14	Idea Cellular	117.16	23%	+3	1.00
15	Sistema Group 3	114.51	3%	-4	2.54
16	Verizon Wireless	111.37	5%	-3	15.78
17	Deutsche Telekom Group	107.86	2%	-3	8.38
18	AT&T	105.21	7%	-2	14.77
19	Telecom Italia	101.10	16%	+1	4.10
20	BSNL	98.28	5%	-2	0.44

Sprint Weighs MetroPCS Bid

Sprint is in the early stages of evaluating a counter offer for MetroPCS Communications Inc. (PCS) to top Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE)’s bid to combine it with T-Mobile USA, BusinessWeek reports.  

Should that happen, it would appear the Sprint board of directors made a bad decision in overruling CEO Dan Hesse's proposal that Sprint should buy MetroPCS, made earlier in 2012.  

Comparing Mobile Wallet Providers

Nice chart by GigaOm's Ryan Kim. 

“Mobiles” are Mostly Used “Untethered”

About 68 percent of consumer mobile phone use occurs in the home, a study sponsored by AOL and BBDO has found. That, as much as anything, shows the growing importance of “untethered” access for mobile devices.

The study, conducted by research firm InsightsNow, shows that a focus on “mobile” devices actually requires understanding the role of untethered access, which in fact might already represent as much as half of all mobile operations on a smart phone.

The study segmented into seven distinct "mobile motivations" that encompass most mobile use:
a. Accomplish - managing activities and lifestyle to gain a sense of accomplishment
b. Socialize- active interaction with other people
c. Prepare - active planning in order to be prepared for upcoming activities
d.Me Time - seeking relaxation and entertainment in order to indulge oneself or pass the time
e. Discover - seeking news and information
f. Shop - focusing on finding a product or service
g.Express Myself  -participating in passions and interests

“Me Time” is by far the biggest pasttime, accounting for almost half (46 percent) of all smart phone app and website activities, averaging 864 minutes per month per user, About 70 percent of those activities are “lean-back” experiences.

4G Retail Prices 20% Higher Than 3G: Can That Last?

​Compared to 3G data pricing, 4G is around 20 percent higher than 3G for the equivalent data plan, according to ABI Research.  Whether that will remain the case longer term is more debatable, ABI Research says.

“In South Korea, SK Telecom has cut its 4G pricing to remain competitive," ABI Research notes.

Their ‘LTE 62 Plan’ for smartphones used to be priced US$55.04 for 3 GB of data, but the monthly download quota has now been increased to 5 GB. 

ABI Research has seen similar 4G mobile data quota and/or pricing revisions in Norway, Hong Kong, and the US,” said Jake Saunders, VP for forecasting at ABI Research.

According to ABI Research’s cross-country comparison of mobile data pricing, the world’s cheapest 4G data plan is currently on offer by CSL Hong Kong, which launched its 4G service in November 2011. 

For 3G mobile data, the lowest tariff can be found in Singapore. Singapore’s M1 offers a 4 GB data plan for US$9.62.

France Telecom Promises Higher LTE Prices

France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard says the coming Long Term Evolution 4G network will be priced at a premium to the 3G network. That isn’t terribly surprising. The established pricing model for fixed or mobile broadband access is that faster networks cost more than slower networks.

And since there is a relatively linear relationship between network speed and data consumption, as a rule, there will be a tendency for usage-based plans to cost more when customers are on faster networks.

Beyond that, service providers always have used “new features” or “new capabilities” as a rationale for higher retail prices. Aside from the fact that LTE is more bandwidth efficient, an advantage for carriers, LTE does feature lower latency, for example, an advantage for end users.

Also, as a practical matter, expensive networks, with high fixed costs, facing significant loss of current revenue, necessarily will look to price increases. Consumers of electricity and water services, for example, sometimes are exhorted to “reduce” use as a “green” effort, or to conserve resources. But if too many electricity or water customers really do so, then revenue for the suppliers drops, and they raise their prices.

So, in a real sense, the growing competition in the market, not just evolving product demand, also would force suppliers to make up revenue losses, somehow.

Executives of European carriers including Vodafone and Spain’s Telefonica say European regulators need to ease restrictions on consolidation to free up resources for investments into faster networks.

“There are hundreds of telecom operators in Europe while there are three or four in major markets like the U.S. and China,” said Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, Telefonica’s COO.

For all of those reasons, higher mobile broadband pricing is coming, as mobile service providers build 4G LTE networks.

Clearwire May Delay LTE Network Build

Clearwire says it is evaluating its Long Term Evolution 4G network plans, to align spending with expected revenue, and "may elect to delay a portion of our deployment schedule accordingly."

In one sense, that is not helpful to Clearwire  at a time when other mobile service providers are building their LTE networks as fast as they can. On the other hand, helpful or not, Clearwire cannot afford to spend more capital than it has access to, even if it would prefer to build faster. 

Clearwire has said it will begin building the LTE network early in 2013 and have 5,000 LTE sites up by middle of 2013.

Clearwire had $1.2 billion in cash at the end of the second quarter and, based on its needs, had enough cash for "at least" the next 12 months. The company, which holds a large chunk of wireless airwave licenses, also has said it could sell assets to raise cash.

As a practical matter, Clearwire might ultimately wind up functioning as a "spot supplier" of additional LTE capacity in markets with heavy usage, rather than as a complete national network using only its own facilities. 

That would not be an unusual pattern in the industry, where virtually no networks have network everywhere. Such a plan also would better match the capital Clearwire seems to have available.