The Mobile Web is 30% Faster Than a Year Ago, Study Finds

Since 2012, desktop Web access median and mean speeds have gotten better by a little, but in a context of typical Web pages getting 56 percent bigger.

Mobile access is around 30 percent faster compared to last year, a Google study has found. 

Verizon Adds New Device Installment Payment Plan

Verizon Wireless seems to have concluded that it makes sense to separate recurring service plans from device installment plans, and has launched a Device Payment Plan that offers the same advantages of phone subsidies, with the advantage of allowing Verizon Wireless to advertiser lower recurring monthly fees.

Under the new plans, consumers will buy their devices over a year, in installments, with a separate charge for service, as T-Mobile USA has done. It is not so clear that consumers actually will save money when using the new plans, especially if they change devices frequently.

But the marketing advantages are clear enough for Verizon. It will now be able to advertise lower monthly prices. 

Verizon Wireless Wants Clearwire Spectrum

It hasn't taken long for the ramifications of proposed deals by Clearwire, Sprint, Softbank, Dish Network, T-Mobile and MetroPCS became even more convoluted. Now it appears Verizon Wireless wants to buy Clearwire spectrum, but not all of Clearwire.

Verizon Wireless is said to be interested in additional spectrum in large cities, and is prepared to spend up to $1.5 billion to buy spectrum leases. 

Dish Tries to Buy Sprint

Dish Network is offering to pay $4.76 in cash and about $2.24 in Dish stock,  for every share of Sprint, in a bid to scuttle the Softbank purchase of Sprint. 

The Dish bid is not entirely unexpected, as Dish had been raising lots of cash and had made earlier efforts to combine, in some way, with Clearwire, for example. The $25.5 billion offer would not immediately affect market share in the U.S. mobile industry, and neither would a Softbank purchase. 

The one combination long rumored that could make an immediate difference is a combination between T-Mobile USA and Sprint. As improbable as a three-way deal might be, all three companies have been talking with the others in recent days. 

And many observers have argued, for some time, that eventually T-Mobile USA and Sprint would have to combine, to provide the critical mass to compete against AT&T and Verizon Wireless.



For Dish, the move would make the company a national provider of voice, video entertainment and Internet access service. 

Whatever the eventual outcome, either Softbank or Dish Network would carry a rather significant debt load. 

Among other issues, the Dish Network bid illustrates a belief on the part of Charlie Ergen, Dish Network CEO, that the video entertainment business, at least from where Dish sits in the market, is being a problem. 

Ergen is among those in the video subscription business who have relatively more publicly suggested the future lies with online video and mobile video. 

Observers will differ on which bid is better, long term, for consumers in the U.S. mobile market. Softbank is a known market disrupter. Dish Network would likely reshape Sprint in the direction of a lower-cost provider, over time. 

The other angle is that the combined companies, with Dish Network's spectrum as well as Clearwire's and Sprin't holdings, would immediately emerge as the U.S. service provider with the most spectrum. 

For reasons of where those frequencies lie, Sprint arguably would be in position to leverage the spectrum assets in ways others would find challenging (think video). 

On the other hand, Verizon Wireless and AT&T might have an advantage, in terms of signal propagation, in many rural areas. 

But none of the deals are done yet. And no matter what happens, either a Softbank or Dish Network or some other deal, T-Mobile USA will still be facing a tough challenge competing with the other three national providers. 

The issue now is whether we have seen the last of the offers, and whether other firms might decide to make a play for either Sprint or T-Mobile USA. When assets are in play, the outcomes rarely are completely predictable. 

71% of Twitter Users Tweet from a Mobile Device

Between March 2012 and October 2012, the proportion of people who used a desktop or notebook computer for tweeting fell from 77 percent to 64 percent. 

The percentage who used a mobile phone for tweeting rose from 53 percent to 64 percent, and those using a tablet rose from 9 percent to 18 percent. 

Overall, the proportion of Twitter users using a mobile device (either tablet or phone) rose from 56 percent to 71 percent.

1000 Times More Bandwidth Needed?

Nobody argues that end user bandwidth demand will keep growing. The issues are "how much" and "how fast" the demand will grow.

For many, the issue therefore is how to achieve a three order of magnitude increase in delivered end use bandwidth, over a relatively short time frame. the problem is most acute for wireless service providers, of course. 

Expand image to read by clicking lower right corner of document. 

userbandwidth.

Myths and challenges of future wireless access (Get further Insights from : http://trends-in-telecoms.blogspot.com/) from Alex wanda

“Transparency,” Not “Choice” or “Savings” is Value of “Non-Subsidized” Phones

O2 in the Unitted Kingdom has launched “O2 Refresh,” a new service plan that decouples a two-year service contract from the consumer purchase of a phone.

O2 Refresh therefore offers two separate plans, one for the phone and one for the airtime.

The issue really is “transparency,” not savings, as some have suggested would be the consumer value of moving to “unlocked phone” policies.

“By signing up to and paying separately for their phone and airtime, customers are given complete transparency, while paying the same overall as they would on a standard 24 month pay monthly tariff,” O2 says.

That’s the key. Some observers have argued that consumers should be able to buy fully unlocked phones and use them on any mobile network, or buy service without a contract.

With some technology constraints where both GSM and CDMA are used, ipeople generally can do that.

What O2’s new plan shows is that the “remedy” of separating device purchases from service plans doesn’t actually provide all that much consumer benefit. If consumers can afford full retail price for phones, they already are free to buy them. If they want service without contracts, they already can buy such service (prepaid, generally).

Under the O2 Refresh plan, users actually will not save money, and still will have a contract. The incremental advantage for O2 is that it can advertise lower monthly fees for service. The advantage for a consumer is the ability to upgrade a phone at any time.

“Increasingly our customers are telling us that they don’t want to be tied to the same phone for two years,” said Feilim Mackle, Telefónica UK sales and service director.

Customers will have a choice of three O2 Refresh Airtime Plans, which have been tailored to meet varying call, text and data requirements. For £12 a month, customers get 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 750MB of data; for £17, customers will have unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of data and for £22 they receive unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 2GB of data.

At launch, O2 Refresh will be available on a range of phones including the HTC One, Sony Xperia Z, Blackberry Z10, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Apple iPhone 5. Following the launch, O2 Refresh will be extended to include a wider range of phones, with a specific focus on high-end smartphones including the Samsung Galaxy S4.

In essence, that approach is what T-Mobile USA is doing with its “no-contract” approach to mobile service pricing. Consumers can buy a full-price retail phone or under an installment contract, with service then offered without a contract.

As you might guess, the actual out of pocket monthly payments for T-Mobile USA service might not change very much.

If one assumes most consumers still are going to opt for device installment plans rather than buying their devices outright, the savings are relatively slight, on a recurring basis, for purchases involving high-end devices.

T-Mobile USA has a $60-a-month 2.5 gigabyte data plan is more than $300 cheaper over two years than an AT&T plan that offers 3 gigabytes and 450 minutes of talk time with the same device. For a user who opts for the installment plan, that works out to about $12.50 a month lower bills than for the rival AT&T plan.

There is an argument that T-Mobile USA plans will save more, compared to service from Verizon Wireless. A user buying that same T-Mobile USA plan, and using the installment plan, would save perhaps $20.83 a month, over two years, compared to a single-user Verizon Wireless plan with 2 gigabytes of data (though the Verizon Wireless plan also would offer unlimited talking and text messaging).

Transparency is a good thing, of course. But the notion that phone unbundling and an end to contracts necessarily provides huge end user value is not so clear.