Content Consumption Shifts to Tablets, Smart Phones

Content that was once primarily accessed by consumers on their PCs, is shifting to mobile devices, according to the NPD Group. Some 37 percent of consumers who used to access content access content on their PCs switched to their tablets and smart phones.

The top two activities that consumers are shifting from their PCs to their tablets and smart phones are web browsing and use of Facebook.

Among tablet owners, 27 percent say they are using their PC less frequently for accessing the Internet and 20 percent say they are using their PC less frequently for accessing Facebook.

Some 27 percent of smart phone owners have decreased both their Internet and Facebook usage on their PCs because they now use their smartphone for these activities, NPD Group fins.

Internet browsing is still highest among PC owners at 75 percent, smart phones at 61 percent, and tablets at 53 percent.  

Facebook usage follows the same pattern, with use of Facebook by PC owners at 63 percent, use of Facebook at 55 percent for smart phone owners and Facebook activity at 39 percent among tablet owners.

Top Activities Where Mobile Devices Mitigate Computer Usage

European Commission Still Wants to Unify 27 Telecom Markets

The European Commission still is working on a blueprint for a single telecoms market in the EC states, a move some tier one service providers want, but which national regulators and smaller service providers might fear.

The issue is how to create one market from 27 distinct national frameworks, as well as how to harmonize investment and operating rules across the different countries. It is not clear that such a move, if successful, actually would create a single regulator across all 27 countries. 

For a few tier one service providers, common rules and a single market would allow a more efficient and profitable approach to providing communications services across Europe. Many smaller providers would find they do not have scale to continue competing successfully, though. 

In fact, the plan might initially entail easier competitor access to tower sites, ducts and other forms of infrastructure. The objective would be to enable some European service providers to achieve greater scale. 

Many would likely argue that the reason AT&T and Verizon Wireless are doing so much better, on a financial basis, than European mobile service providers is that both those firms enjoy a large, continental-sized internal market. The EC moves aim to replicate such advantages in Europe. 

Will Austrian Spectrum Set Aside Work?

Reserving spectrum for new competitors is a relatively common tactic regulators take when trying to encourage competition when new blocks of communications spectrum are to be licensed.

Austria in 2013 will be holding an auction of 28 blocks of spectrum in the 800MHz, 900MHz and 1.8GHz bands, for launching Long Term Evolution networks.

Two of the 800-MHz blocks will be set aside for a new mobile firm not already in the market. The minimum reserve price for this spectrum will be €45.6 million.

Some think such spectrum set asides are not economically effective, essentially denying use of spectrum to the providers who can put resources to work most efficiently.

Nor is it clear that spectrum set asides actually wind up changing market structures long term. One might argue Illiad’s Free Mobile is shaking up France’s mobile market, but the full story is not to be told, yet.

One might argue the auction of personal communications service spectrum did enable firms such as Sprint to enter the U.S. market, and Sprint remains the number three provider, in terms of market share.

But it also is possible to argue that Sprint’s final story also is yet to be written. On the other hand, Sprint’s market entry was not enabled by a set aside, either. Typically, set asides do not allow a new contestant to amass enough total spectrum to really challenge market leaders.

The financial backers of a “set aside” firm do stand to profit. They do. But whether markets actually are changed, long term, is far from clear.

It is likely more nearly the case that a new competitor, using set aside spectrum, can introduce some amount of competition in a market, at least for a time. What remains unclear is whether such firms can affect the structure of a market over the long term.

5 Billion New Internet Users Next 10 Years?

"Only about two billion of the world's seven billion people have an internet connection, and I believe the remaining five billion will get one in the next decade," says Eric Schmidt, Google chairman.  "Almost one billion of them will come online in India."

Whether Schmidt is precisely right about the timing, adding five billion people to the ranks of Internet users in just a decade is a huge and obviously significant undertaking. 

Developing nations will become the focus of broadband growth over the next decade or two, building on a substantial amount of growth since about 2005.

By the end of 2011, 2.3 billion people (around a third the world’s population) accessed the internet globally, almost double the 1.2 billion figure recorded in 2006, according to Ofcom.

Over this period growth in internet use was fastest among developing countries, and by 2011 62 percent of Internet users were located in developing countries , an increase from 44 percent in 2006.

developing nation broadband will double between 2011 and 2015, for example.

Tablet Penetration Reaches 50% of Internet Homes

Tablet penetration of U.S. Internet-using homes has reached 53 percent, according to the NPD Group. 

PC penetration among U.S. Internet connected households is nearly ubiquitous at 93 percent.  

Smart phone penetration now stands at 57 percent of mobile phone users. 

What Problem is Network Neutrality Solving?

Not everybody has been convinced that "network neutrality" rules are a terribly good way to solve the problem of unfair business competition. 

As a practical matter, U.S. "network neutrality" rules mean that Internet service providers can sell consumers one type of Internet access service, namely a "best effort" class of service that does not prioritize any packets, at any time, for any reason save security. 

For a person who wants to watch video or use VoIP at times of network congestion, that is not terribly helpful. 

DSL Leads Cable in Rural Markets

Cable high speed access might hold the largest market share in many urban markets, but that does not seem to be the case in rural markets, where digital subscriber line access has the largest market share, a study using 2010 data suggests.

In 2010, DSL had 28 percent share in rural areas, while cable services had about 20 percent share. Fiber to home services had about one percent share.

Mobile broadband access had gotten six percent share, while satellite services had three percent share, and “others” had about one percent share.

It is possible, perhaps likely, the study says, that use of mobile broadband has grown since 2010. In fact, mobile phones were used for broadband access more frequently than satellite connections in 2010.

Rates of broadband adoption in non-metropolitan households increased from 10 percent to 57 percent, mirroring an increase of adoption for people in metro regions, between 2003 to 2010. By 2010, household broadband adoption in metro areas had grown to about 70 percent of homes.

Despite that huge increase in broadband adoption since 2003, the broadband adoption gap between metro and non-metro areas is about 13 percent in 2010, about the same as the gap was in in both 2003.

But the most rural counties experienced significant improvements in broadband adoption between 2008 and 2011, a study conducted by Brian Whitacre (Oklahoma State University), Roberto Gallardo (Mississippi State University),and Sharon Strover (University of Texas), has found.