Galaxy S III, iPhone Users are "the Same"

Many early studies suggested Apple iPhone owners were "different" in terms of demographics. Early adopters were disproportionately wealthier, male and technology savvy, compared to buyers of other devices. Over time, those differences have narrowed.

Now a study by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners suggests iPhone and Galaxy S III owners behave the same way.
  
“Use for calling, texting, email, and Internet access was the same for both phones,”Consumer Intelligence Research Partners suggests. “Use differed only for gaming and photos, with iPhone owners using their phones somewhat more frequently for these.”

One might therefore argue that the Galaxy S III is, in many ways, a functional substitute for the iPhone, for many users, in the area of behavior, not simply device preference.

The study also confirms what you might have guessed, namely that smart "phones" actually are more often used for use of Internet applications or text messaging, than for phone calls. 

Phone use was only slightly more frequent than use of email, the study suggests. 

Verizon Messaging: Will it Show the Value of a Phone Number?

Verizon Messaging is a new multi-screen messaging service that extends "Verizon Messages" service to PCs, Android smart phones, and Android or iOS tablets. 

The advantages over third party messaging apps all hinge on integration of the mobile device phone number.Where a third party app has to be present on both sender an recipient devices, Verizon Messaging only requires mobile phone numbers on either end of the communication. 

In other words, senders only have to know that a recipient has a mobile number, and the message can be received on a PC or tablet, as well as the phone, without the need to know whether the recipient has loaded the right app on all of the receiving devices. 

Also, messages can be stored if the recipient devices are not "online" to receive them in real time. That is a difference from third party messaging services that require both sender and receiver to be online at the same time. 

Virtual Currency is "Currency," U.S. Treasury Decides

The U.S. Treasury has decided to apply  money laundering rules to "virtual currencies" such as "bitcoin." 

The move illustrates a principle. Very often, new Internet-based alternatives to legacy products and processes get created.

For a time, those innovations are ignored. As they start to become more significant, a regulatory rule tends to emerge, namely that if something "walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck."

In other words, the new form of a legacy product or process or function comes under the same regulatory framework as the original product or function. Virtual currency has gotten to that point.

The other observation is that new IP-based or Internet-based alternatives to legacy ways of doing things often are based on arbitrage of some sort. That typically allows competitors to get started. But the arbitrage opportunity rarely lasts. 

Regulators tend to move to level the playing field, in regulatory terms. And competitors respond. 

The Treasury says money-laundering rules apply to 'virtual currencies.'


The move means that firms that issue or exchange online "cash" will now be regulated in a similar manner as traditional money-order providers such as Western Union Co.

As a practical matter, that will mean more costs, as suppliers would have new bookkeeping requirements and mandatory reporting for transactions of more than $10,000.

HBO Go a High Speed Access "Enhanced Service?"

Broadband Internet service providers always are looking for ways to enhance their services and add value, to avoid a "commodity" approach. Could HBO GO, a streaming service sold by HBO, be such an example of a value-added feature?

It wouldn't be easy, as HBO's important cable, telco and satellite video distributors would not necessarily take kindly to HBO essentially making an end run around them. 

HBO's "HBO GO" online streaming service presently is available only to subscribers to video entertainment services who also buy HBO. 

But HBO continues to talk about the possibility it could be sold, perhaps as a feature of a high-speed access service, to customers who buy voice or broadband access from a  partner, but do not buy a video service. 

It would be a delicate balancing act, and it remains unclear whether the business model actually would work, HBO executives are careful to point out. 

HBO now is talking about an incremental fee of $10 to $15 on top of the customer's high speed access fee, for example. 

By extension, where ISPs have sold security services as an add-on to their access services, perhaps one day streaming video will be another type of add-on feature. 

Each Generation of Mobile Networks Has Required More Backhaul

There’s a very simple reason mobile backhaul demand is growing. By 2017, U.S. mobile data consumption will grow by 11 times the 2012 volume. The other issue is a change in network architecture. With each generation of mobile networks, the number of cells required to cover any area has grown.

That order of magnitude increase will create a market for consumer, enterprise and carrier small cells of about 21 million units, according to researchers at iGR.

What that could mean for mobile backhaul is fairly clear. The number of outdoor small cell backhaul connections deployed by service providers  is forecast by Infonetics to grow more than 100-fold from 2012 to 2016, according to Infonetics Research.

So an order of magnitude increase in mobile bandwidth consumption will lead to two orders of magnitude growth of service provider small cell sites.

What already seems clear is that many of those sites will require wireless backhaul. Smaller, cheaper radios will be needed. But lower cost backhaul connections also will be crucial. In some cases that will mean using consumer grade or business grade digital subscriber line or cable modem connections.

In many other cases unlicensed or licensed radio spectrum will be the connections of choice.

LTE Device Sales Grow 151% in 4Q 2012

Sales of 4G LTE devices were up 151 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to Infonetics Research.

Infonetics expects the number of global mobile broadband subscribers (phone and mobile Internet dongles) to grow from 1.2 billion in 2012 to nearly three billion by 2017. 

Regulating IP Communications is Like Fighting the Last War

It often is said that generals always are ready to fight the last war, especially if it was a lost war. It's catchy, and probably wrong, but you get the point: it is awfully easy to view the future through the lens of the past.

So it also is easy to argue that it is time to stop obsessing over legacy voice regulation at a time when that part of the business actually is "dying."

More than 40 percent of U.S. homes have abandoned their landline phone service in favor of cable, VoIP and mobile.

By the end of 2013, according to USTelecom, less than 30 percent of U.S. homes will rely on a wired connection as their primary telephone service. 

Mobile service providers already are trying to get ahead of the game as well. AT&T, Verizon Wireless (and likely T-Mobile USA, soon) already have moved to a preferred retail packaging that bundles unlimited domestic calling and text messaging with a variable bucket of data usage that drives most of the account revenue.

They are doing so to protect voice and messaging revenues that are expected to begin a long, steady decline.

That is not to say every actor in the communications ecosystem will be happy about a rapid transition to all-IP communications and a new regulatory framework.

But the point is clear enough: we would be wasting time heavily regulating a service that is in"sunset" mode. We essentially made a similar, if smaller mistake when creating the Telecommunications act of 1996. The whole idea was to shake up the voice business.

The whole effort missed the fact that the Internet, mobile and IP communications were about to displace huge chunks of the old voice business.  The principle should now be clear: don't spend lots of time and effort "regulating" a service that is not driving communications in the 21st century.