Lower-Cost iPhone for China is Part of a Clear Trend

New rumors about a more-affordable iPhone, intended for sale in markets such as China, illustrate an important trend in technology products, namely the awareness that billions of consumers around the globe want, can benefit from, and will increasingly be able to afford, communications and communications tools once largely used only in developed nations. 

The desire might be clear enough, though the challenges are equally clear. What economists or business strategists sometimes call "the bottom of the pyramid" refers to the largest, but poorest socio-economic group of human beings, globally.

That has at times meant there are four billion people living on less than $2.50 per day. In the past that might have meant an overwhelming sense of confronting an immovable barrier to economic and social development. That is changing, as a new global middle class emerges. Nevertheless, applying first world technology in a third world context is challenging. 

The point is that new models of doing business are required. The classic form of the challenge, in the global communications business, has been the problem of supplying basic voice communications to the billions of people who had, late in the last century, "never made a phone call."

Mobile communications has been the surprising answer. Similar concerns have been raised about the cost of computing appliances. But many would argue that the smart phone, or the tablet, will solve that problem. All of that largely means the "problem" of getting people Internet access also will be solved. 

Nor does one have to assume excessive altruism on the part of industry suppliers, either. The simple fact is that computing, communications and other Internet products can be effectively sold globally, to the "base of the pyramid," new markets measured in billions of users are possible. 

That's a big deal. The opportunity to sell billions of units to billions of new customers would be attractive under any set of circumstances. But the importance is heightened because of stagnant or saturated markets in many parts of the developed world. 

In fact, the cost of the device might not be so important as the service cost.

On the other hand, lower cost devices could have important repercussions in developed nation markets as well. Consider only the issue of device subsidies. A lower-cost iPhone would lessen the need for such subsidies. less

Wireless Wins, Dish CEO Says

"At some point, the cheapest infrastructure to deliver the highest number of bits to the largest number of people is all going to be wireless," Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen says. 

That has to be a contested notion, as fiber to the home advocates would say there is just no way wireless can supply as much bandwidth as a waveguide approach. 

But there's a likely contextual element. Most observers without a business stake in the answer would say that wireless is the most-affordable way to deliver the highest number of bits to the largest number of people in a developing or rural area, quickly. 

But that's a business definition, not strictly a scientific or technical answer. And that is the context within which Ergen says that wireless eventually will be the cheapest way to deliver lots of bandwidth. 

Of course, that also would reflect Ergen's history in the satellite TV business, which features many of the same economic advantages as mobile service does, in terms of quickly and cheaply delivering television to harder-to-serve areas. 

FCC Touts New Wi-Fi Band of As Much as 195 MHz

The Federal Communications Commission says it will “soon” move to allow spectrum sharing between Wi-Fi service providers and licensed government users of spectrum in the 5-GHz range.

Such unlicensed spectrum could represent up to 195 megahertz of spectrum, the largest block of unlicensed spectrum to be made available for expansion of Wi-Fi since 2003, the Commission says.

Regulators also are looking at something similar 5-GHz spectrum in Europe. Separately, the FCC also is looking at spectrum sharing for other frequencies as well, such as spectrum in the 3.5-GHz band envisioned for use by operators of “small cell” networks. 

Spectrum sharing is not rare in the frequencies above about 3 GHz, NTIA says.

M2M Forecast Illustrates a Problem for Big Service Providers

Verizon executives have been saying for years that machine-to-machine services (the Internet of things) is one reason why mobile penetration ultimately would reach into the four hundred percent range.

"It's safe to say this is a market potential of billions in the 2020 time frame," Lowell McAdam said. This should translate into a market with "hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for a company the size of us."  Reuters reports. 

To be sure, with expectations that billions of sensors will be using mobile networks for connectivity, Verizon has reason to be optimistic. 

The longer term issue is precisely how big M2M services will be for individual service providers. Hundreds of millions in revenue is not a bad start, but will not really move the needle much, for firms the size of Verizon, unless revenue reaches into the billions. 

Certainly Verizon Wireless reasons that can happen. Some idea of how big M2M would have to be, to have a serious revenue impact, can be illustrated by noting the change $1 a month in mobile customer account revenues would have, either in a positive or negative direction. 

Verizon Wireless had about 96 million customers at the end of the third quarter of 2012. It probably had something closer to 98 million customers by the end of the fourth quarter of 2012. If Verizon never added another net customer, its business fortunes would be far more significant if it can grow each "phone" account by about $1 a month. 

Such growth per "human" account represents about $1.2 billion in annual revenue, either positive or negative. In other words, by 2020, assuming Verizon did have an M2M business worth hundreds of millions, those business results would be dwarfed by incremental changes in revenue from "human" accounts. 

That illustrates the huge challenge for large service providers: the magnitude of revenue or earnings impact from the legacy business, even for small incremental changes, is much more significant than even big success with many of the newer businesses service providers are growing. 

As pundits often observe, it makes sense for company executives to pay attention to the relative handful of things that really can affect a company's financial performance.

It is essential that service providers continue to look for new revenue sources. But it also is helpful to remember just how big those new revenue sources have to be, to really affect the overall revenue picture. 

1 Gbps Internet Access: Could Verizon Defeat Rivals by Launching an Arms Race?

In January 2011, then Verizon COO Lowell McAdam said FiOS already has been tested for 1-Gbps service, though at that point the marketing effort was on Verizon's 150-Mbps offer.

In January 2013, as Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said the same thing at the Consumer Electronics Show. 

That, of course, is the point of fiber to the home: it offers practically unlimited bandwidth. The issue always is how much bandwidth to offer, and that is a market receptiveness question. Verizon, or any other would-be supplier of very-high-speed Internet access, should offer the highest speeds at which that provider can make a positive business case.


Of course, as already is clear, unless the whole of the Internet is architecturally able to support speeds up to 1 Gbps, the bigger access pipe doesn't actually provide a consumer too much. 

Consumer experience with streamed Netflix content on Google Fiber already shows that removing the local access bottleneck on one end only moves the bottleneck elsewhere. 

But even as a marketing tool, spending one's adversary into defeat can work. In other words, Verizon arguably has the easiest task of all major access providers in widely deploying 1-Gbps service, across its footprint, rather quickly. There are real costs to add the faster opto-electronics, so the decision is not one Verizon would undertake lightly.

However, should the need arise, Verizon is best placed to push the matter on a full-production scale, putting nearly all its rivals at a disadvantage, since other competitors would be unable to match 1-Gbps speeds at all, while others (cable operators) would be able to do so, but not without significant, and time-consuming access plant upgrades or severe reconfiguration of video entertainment bandwidth. 

To be sure, executives who argue there is no serious end user benefit for 1-Gbps, today, are right. The rest of the Internet is not set up to support such speeds, so the constraints merely shift to far end servers, application coding, transport links and far-end access links. 

But someday, that might not be true. And just before that point is reached, Verizon could, in principle, make the leap to 1-Gbps service at a time when nearly all of its competitors would be unable to react at all, or would be able to react only over time.

Retail tariffs would be important, as well. Consumers might find that "slower" connections of hundreds of megabits per second actually work well enough that they would be unwilling to pay a premium for full 1-Gbps service. 

But that's partly why Google Fiber is priced the way it is: to create market pressure for lower-priced but very fast access services. Though the analogy is not perfect, U.S. President Ronald Reagan essentially started an arms race he knew the Soviet Union could not afford, leading essentially to the end of the former USSR. 

At least conceptually, Verizon could do something similar. How soon such a move might be useful is not clear. 

Expectations about what is needed change over time, nearly always in a direction of "faster access."  But Verizon wouldn't necessarily gain much by moving too soon. It would want to move just before the demand reaches significant proportions. 

Market Impact of Full Shift to "Unsubsidized Phones" is Unclear

Nobody really knows what would happen if virtually all the U.S. mobile service providers  abandoned device subsidies, Not only are changes of consumer behavior highly likely, but there also would be average revenue per user impact as well.

Executives might prefer not to incur the hit to operating revenue the subsidies represent.

But huge potential changes in consumer behavior, and rates of innovation, could happen, and not all the changes would be positive for service providers.

Handset prices might have to shift towards less-expensive models, while consumers likely also would slow the rate at which they replaced their devices.

Aside from the implications for handset prices, average revenue per user would drop. So executives will have to do analysis of what lower gross revenue would mean, even if the cost of device subsidies is partially or totally eliminated. And it isn’t so clear that subsidy costs could be avoided altogether.

Much would depend on how consumers and handset suppliers reacted to the changes. It is possible the value of exclusive device deals would diminish. It is possible consumers would “trade down” in terms of handsets, slow rates of replacement or switch to prepaid plans that would still be cheaper than the “no-subsidy” postpaid plans.

In other words, there would be a possibility of unforeseen changes in consumer behavior that would not be helpful to the service providers, even if they assume the switch to “no subsidies” would be beneficial.

Up to this point, it has not made much economic sense for a customer to buy an unlocked phone and then buy postpaid service from a leading service provider, since there is in fact no discount for customers who wish to do so.  

T-Mobile USA already has decided to end device subsidies, but in a nuanced way. It offers installment payment plans, and has found more of its customers shifting to “buy your own device” or “bring your own device” retail plans, as a result.

T-Mobile USA says it plans to end all device subsidies in 2013, after finding that perhaps 80 percent of its customers choose a "bring your own device" or "buy your own phone" plan anyway.

To ease the "sticker shock," T-Mobile USA offers installment plans. But some would note that the total price of the service plus the installment plan does not actually save users money over buying a traditional plan from another carrier.

T-Mobile USA apparently has seen about 1.9 million iPhone users bring their own devices to T-Mobile USA, growing by 100,000 a month. That is a somewhat special case, as such users probably originally were AT&T customers, probably did get subsidized phones, and then moved over to T-Mobile USA after their AT&T contracts expired.

It isn’t quite so clear how many people are opting to pay full retail price for an iPhone, and that is the real issue.

Also, much of T-Mobile USA’s customer base is oriented towards the “value” end of the business, namely prepaid, where subsidies traditionally have not played a role, in any case.

But some would argue that T-Mobile USA hasn't really ended contracts, either, even for customers who bring their own devices, or opt to buy new devices. Nor have the company financial results clear, in terms of the impact of the new strategy.

Until we get a firmer sense of how T-Mobile USA is faring, financially, it is highly unlikely AT&T, Verizon or Sprint would risk financial damage by shifting sharply to a “no subsidies” model.

Dish Network Bids for Clearwire

Sprint, which has been engaged in a purchase of Clearwire Corporation, now faces a rival bid from Dish Network. Dish has made a non-binding offer of $3.30 per share.

Sprint earlier had made a binding offer of $2.97 a share. As always, a range of possibilities, some not mutually exclusive, could explain the bid. Since Dish needs a partner to build out its now-approved Long Term Evolution network, an acquisition of Clearwire might help on that score. 

Dish might be betting that the value of its new LTE license, plus the Clearwire network, would make an attractive asset for another company to purchase.

But Dish might also be trying only to irritate a major competitor, drive up that competitor's purchase price for Clearwire, and send yet one more signal that Dish Network is serious about getting into the mobile business. 

Sending such signals would, one might argue, both raise Dish Network's profile among potential buyers and partners. The former  would presumably ad equity value if Dish would contemplate selling, the latter would encourage partners to see Dish as a more valuable partner.

With Dish, one never knows. An opportunistic company, Dish Network might be persuadable either way. And some might argue an LTE  spectrum bubble is forming, driven by would-be suppliers of spectrum originally intended for mobile satellite purposes. 

On the other hand, many say the spectrum will ultimately be needed. The issue, for some, might be how much is needed right now.