2 LTE Air Interfaces for China?

China Telecom's chief executive officer says China Telecom prefers the frequency division flavor of Long Term Evolution rather than the time division flavor chosen by its rival China Mobile. 

If China Telecom does opt for frequency division (FDD-LTE) rather than China Mobile's TD-LTE, it would mean the Chinese market would feature two distinct air interfaces for Long Term Evolution networks. 

Some might say that is not such a good outcome, as handsets might be incompatible. But the choice of FDD-LTE also would mean that China Telecom has immediate access to devices already developed for North American markets, where FDD-LTE is the air interface.

China Mobile already has committed to build its 4G network based on the TD-LTE standard. 

U.K.'s EE Launches Fixed LTE Service

U.K.-based EE is launching  a "4G fixed and mobile broadband service" in Cumbria, said to be one of the most rural areas of the United Kingdom.

The launch will offer many Northern Fells residents access to average upload and download speeds between 8 Mbps and 12 Mbps, with "headline speeds" over 20 Mbps.

The region, covering almost 100 square miles, also is said to contain the highest concentration of homeworkers in the UK.

The move obviously has implications. The Cumbria area is so rural that fixed networks are quite expensive, a situation not restricted only to Cumbria. The new 4G network will offer faster service than fixed networks can, in that area. 

In a sense, 4G LTE therefore competes directly with satellite broadband and terrestrial fixed wireless methods of providing Internet access. AT&T and Verizon, it is fair to say, will be testing those notions in the U.S. market, at some point.

In Europe, in some countries, mobile substitution already runs in the mid single digits to high double digits range, providing some indication of how much adoption fixed versions of LTE could attain.

To really do so requires a change in "universal service" regulations, though, allowing the providers to use any available and feasible technology to serve customers. 

Chrome, Android OS Will Not Merge, Google Chairman Says

Chrome and Android operating systems will remain separate products, although there could be more "commonality" between them, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said. 

Speculation about such convergence has been an obvious subject of speculation as tablets and phablets blur the lines between "phones" and "personal computers," raising the possibility that a common operating system could evolve out of the separate Android and Chrome environments.

It still is possible something like that might happen in the future, but the current thinking probably is that merging the two operating systems would result in a creation with too much overhead and "weight," making the resulting OS sub-optimal compared to distinct approaches optimized for the PC and smart phone-tablet environments.

YouTube Now Gets 1 Billion Users a Month

YouTube now has more than a billion unique users users:  every single month, representing about half of all Internet users globally. What isn't yet so clear, as with Android, is how widespread usage will lead to business benefits for Google, especially revenue. 

Current thinking probably revolves around advertising, a logical enough line of thought. But most media-related businesses have multiple sources of revenue (subscriptions, advertising, promotion and marketing services, research, conferences), so it is possible other sources ultimately could be important as well. 


And mobile and tablets figure into the discussion in a big way. For the first time, an entire generation has grown up watching content using the Internet, mobile, and social apps, consuming content when and where they want. 

Nielsen calls this group "Generation C" because they are not just defined by their age group, but by their connected behavior. In part, that means they watch on multiple devices, though in linear fashion. 

But the deeper  changes pertain to "sharing" behaviors. Generation C creates videos, and does not simply watch them. They share what they like and curate content for others. All of that means YouTube could have monetization opportunities of several types, eventually. 

At least some of those opportunities will flow from the use of mobiles with highly contextual location capabilities. 

Amazon Gets CIA Cloud Computing Deal

The Central Intelligence Agency reportedly has agreed to a cloud computing cloud computing contract with Amazon Web Services that could be worth up to $600 million over a decade. 

The deal adds some luster to AWS, the market leader in cloud computing, as a vote of confidence in Amazon's ability to provide a highly reliable and highly secure private cloud computing environment. 

But the deal might also suggest that the CIA sees cloud computing as a more cost effective way to take advantage of the latest developments in commercial technology and rapid innovation, compared to older ways of creating information technology assets, especially developing key systems "in house."

Instead, the CIA seems to be sending a clear message that commodity hardware platforms, married to software as a service, are not only more effective (works better), but also more efficient (costs less).

One would suspect the deal increases the likelihood of additional wins in the federal government segment of the communications and IT business. Perhaps oddly, most of the estimate revenue in the cloud computing business might not come from core "computing" services, but from the purchase of cloud-based applications (software as a service). 

When Reporting Metrics Change, the Business is Changing

Verizon doesn't think it makes sense to keep measuring its wireless business using the traditional "average revenue per subscriber," especially as an increasing number of subscriptions are machine-to-machine connections. 

In fact, Verizon no longer reports average revenue per user (ARPU). Instead, it reports average revenue per account (ARPA). That is in large part a response to the company's "Share Everything" plans, which have multiple devices on one account. 

There are other future changes coming as well. Assuming machine to machine services become widespread, the notion of revenue per account might likewise have to be revised. 

A typical "human" account will typically represent much more revenue than an M2M connection, often amounting to an order of magnitude to two orders of magnitude difference. 

A single "account" might represent a utility with hundreds of thousands of "users" in a single area, so neither revenue per "user" or revenue "per account" might be too meaningful, when mixed with average revenue per account for consumer mobile users.

The point is that when an industry starts arguing that traditional metrics are losing their value, and starts using new measurements of business success, it is a sure sign that the business model for that industry is changing.

By September 2013, when the next TV season begins, Nielsen expects to have in place new hardware and software tools to capture viewership not just from the 75 percent of homes that rely on cable, satellite and over the air broadcasts but also viewing via devices that deliver video from streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, X-Box and PlayStation.

In part, that change is due to pressure from networks that believe their audiences are undervalued by the current ratings system. At some point, observers believe, Nielsen will try and move in the direction of ability to measure video viewing from any source, and any device.

Changes in metrics are not unusual in the telecom business, either. Around the turn of the 20th century, when telcos routinely were measured by access lines, new alternate access businesses were selling high capacity data circuits, not voice lines. So in an effort to highlight the value of such businesses, firms began reporting access line equivalents.

Few bother to do so, anymore, as financial markets seem to grasp the concept of an IP bandwidth provider quite well. But, for a time, firms reports such bandwidth equivalents of voice lines as a metric of growth. Of course, to be sure, the measurement also was faulty.

It was used by some executives to demonstrate business value growth pegged to an older and higher multiple method, rather than a new method that might not value the revenue streams so highly.

But the problem is real enough. As service providers in the fixed networks business started to sell large quantities of new products, the older metrics began to make less sense. That is why the concept of “revenue generating units” has displaced use of “lines” or “basic cable subscribers” as meaningful measuring tools.

These days, what matters is the sale of new units of something, whether voice, messaging, video, data access or something else is less significant. The other more prosaic issue is that since executives cannot demonstrate organic growth of their legacy product lines, they’d rather create new metrics that highlight growth in the new lines of business.

The bottom line is that when the measurements start to change, it is a clear sign that the business already has started to change.

Visa, MasterCard Strike Back at Competitors Like PayPal

PayPal has big ambitions in the mobile payments space. Visa and MasterCard have no intentions of ceding their current roles to any new providers. So it is not surprising that Visa CEO Charlie Scharf suggests Visa may impose a digital wallet fee on digital wallet suppliers like PayPal that use the Visa transaction clearing and settlements network.

MasterCard already does so. 

The charges would apply when branded Visa or MasterCard bank cards are used to fund a PayPal transaction. 

Granted, it may take some time before mobile payments, mobile wallets and mobile commerce assume relatively stable future forms. 

Technology adoption, though we sometimes believe otherwise, can take quite a long time, even for innovations that wind up being quite useful and ubiquitous.

Telephone and electricity took decades to reach significant penetration. The PC, the Internet (Web, at least) and mobile phones were adopted much faster.

Given the current interest in mobile payments, mobile banking and mobile wallets, it might be worth remembering that innovations related to payments and money often take decades to reach significant penetration.

The point is that it would not be unusual for a decade to pass before we even get to the inflection point for adoption, often said to be 10 percent of households.

Visa and MasterCard are not simply "resisting" change; they are trying to shape the evolving mobile payments in ways that ensure they both still have important roles. Raising costs for potential competitors is just one way to do so.