Time Warner Cable Now Finds Voice is a Legacy Product

Business customer services and high-speed Internet access drove growth at Time Warner Cable in the first quarter of 2013. But video and now voice have started shrinking. 

As telcos have faced for years, users are dropping VoIP lines as they have been dropping other fixed network voice connections, and shifting to use of mobiles instead. That doesn't mean every cable operator faces the problem to the same degree. 

But some cable operators no longer are taking voice share from telcos, because the big trend now is abandonment of fixed voice. 

What remains to be seen is how far service providers are willing to go in creating triple or quad play bundles that provide incentives for users to buy voice services even if they do not plan to use them. 

Residential high-speed data revenue growth was the result of an increase in average revenue per subscriber, primarily due to an increase in equipment rental charges and a greater percentage of subscribers purchasing higher-priced tiers of service, as well as growth in high-speed data subscribers. 

As has been the trend for some time, residential video revenue decreased, driven by declines in video subscribers and premium network and video-on-demand revenue, partially offset by price increases and a greater percentage of subscribers purchasing higher-priced tiers of service.

Time Warner Cable residential voice revenue decreased due to a decrease in average revenue per subscriber, the company says. 

Add Events to Google Calendar from Gmail

Gmail apparently is rolling out an update to Gmail that allows message recipients to create events directly from inside their Gmail messges. 

The update to Gmail is available to the first users May 2, 2013.  Dates and times within emails will appear as lightly underlined. When they are clicked a user's calendar (presumably the calendar associated with the same Gmail address, users will be able to preview their schedules and change the title, date or time of the event. 

Clicking “Add to Calendar” will do exactly that , the Official Gmail Blog says. The calendar event will include a link back to the original email. 

Those of you who have multiple Gmail accounts probably will find you cannot create an entry on the other account or accounts using the feature, though. I'd tell you, but I haven't gotten the update just yet. 

The other issue I am wondering about is the "different time zone" issue. I can't tell immediately whether it is possible to schedule an event, by time, using a discrete time zone other than the zone your PC is set to use. 

Still, I assume lots of us are used to manually setting different time zones. And of course, those of us using more than one Gmail account might prefer to be able to create events on both calendars, or all calendars. I'll have to wait to find out. 

Don't Wait for Federal Government to "Do Something" About Broadband, Gig.U Says

Blair Levin, executive director of the University Community Next Generation Innovation Project (Gig.U) believes the key to U.S, efforts to dramatically boost broadband speeds is not to rely on federal leadership but instead emphasize local leadership.

Working in partnership with companies willing to invest ahead of the current market is the way to make huge leaps, Levin argues. The point is that investment is needed. 

In many cases, the suggestion is that partnerships might try and leverage existing optical fiber networks already in place on the backbone level, in some form of public-private partnership, something that European broadband advocates also support. 

 That always is helpful, but broadband still hinges on access cost and clear-headed assessment of risk and reward. 

Do Spectrum Set-Asides 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.

The U.S. Department of Justice has suggested Sprint and T-Mobile USA be allowed to acquire spectrum on a preferred basis, when auctions are held for upcoming blocks of spectrum at frequencies below 1 GHz, essentially.

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.  But whether markets actually are changed, long term, when set-asides are used, is far from clear.

Belgian Content Companies Want 3.4% of ISP Revenue

Every new ecosystem of sufficient size, especially when that new ecosystem upsets legacy revenue models, faces challenge from legacy stakeholders. Telco executives complain about app providers "using our pipes for free." Physical retailers joust with Internet retailers. Google Drive competes with Microsoft Office. Newspapers want revenue sharing from Google. 

Now copyright owners in Belgium want Internet service providers to pay them 3.4 percent of access revenue. The thinking is that the Internet enables some amount of piracy, so copyright owners need to be compensated for such piracy by the ISPs that enable some users to steal content. 

The lawsuit has been brought by the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers, known as Sabam. 

It isn't the first, nor will it be the last effort to shift revenue flows within the Internet ecosystem. 

“Disruption” is a huge concept in the Internet and communications ecosystems precisely because, from time to time, a contestant tries to disrupt the structure of the business, and sometimes succeeds.

Nor, contrary to conventional wisdom, is it always young upstarts and start-ups that make the attempts. Apple was no small firm when it recreated the mobile phone business. Softbank was not an unknown little company when it reshaped the Japanese mobile service provider business.

Nor does disruption happen “overnight.” Huawei has disrupted the global telecom equipment business, but over a decade.

Fon has been trying, with some success of late, to create a new way for people and now even service providers to provide “access” to the Internet. Republic Wireless and FreedomPop are other entities attempting to disrupt the mobile or Internet access businesses.

For incumbents who are the target of the attempted disruptive attacks, the major issues include shrinking gross revenue, declining profit margins, fixed costs and the need to create new business models and revenue streams.

Mobile executives said they want “a more equitable share of the spoils” from mobile ecosystem value, says Emeka Obiodu, Ovum telco strategy analyst, Ovum. That isn’t a new refrain, nor unusual in a business where value and revenue are being created in new ways.

As usual, the separation of access and apps lies at the heart of the concern. The “problem” is that networks are seen as providing foundation for application businesses that service providers do not own or control. To put the matter in other terms, over the top app providers and businesses are viewed by telco executives as “riding the pipes for free.”

“This challenge needs to be overcome,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson noted.  Other executives tended to agree.

To be sure, precisely how modern networks can be built and upgraded is an issue.  There is universal agreement that most of the legacy revenue that historically has funded such networks is at risk of disappearing, in large part from competitive apps that displace communication services, or because consumers simply have changing preferences.

But some might note that a large part of the problem is simply that telco cost structures are out of line with current or future revenues. Other competitors offer similar services using networks and business models with different cost structures.

Are BT's Broadband Access Rates Too Low?

TalkTalk Group in the United Kingdom has complained to Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator, about prices BT charges for its broadband access products.

Specifically, TalkTalk Group thinks BT Infinity retail prices are too low. Yes, too low. The problem, as TalkTalk sees matters, is that very low BT Infinity prices are so low that TalkTalk has little room to buy wholesale capacity from Openreach and sell at retail against the BT pricing umbrella.

In other words, BT is engaging in predatory pricing intended to damage its competitors, TalkTalk alleges. 

Ofcom has opned a proceeding to consider the charges. A 2010 comparison of "superfast" services in a number of countries (it always is difficult to compare prices in terms of local purchasing power, or percentage of household income, across nations) might not suggest U.K. prices are so low. 

The issue is that BT cannot price in a predatory manner, as a dominant provider in the U.K. market. 

   Broadband Service Speed and Price (High Tier)

Country	Downstream	Upstream	Price
Canada[3]	25	7	$67
Denmark[4]	40	2	$72
Finland[5]	24	1	$67
Hong Kong[6]	100	Unlisted	$38
Japan[7]	200	100	$60
South Korea[8]	100	Unlisted	$29
Sweden[9]	100	100	$46
Taiwan[10]	100	5	$37
U.K.[11]	50	Unlisted	$57
United States[12]	50	20	$145

You Will Be Supplying Your Own Smart Phone at Half of Enterprises by 2017, Gartner Says

By 2017, possibly 50 percent of enterprises will require employees to provide their own computing or communications tools, especially smart phones, Gartner now predicts. 

Some 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016, according to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner. 

Those forecasts, if borne out, indicate that an inflection point in enterprise computing already has happened.

"BYOD strategies are the most radical change to the economics and the culture of client computing in business in decades," said David Willis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

The changes come for a myriad of reasons, including the power of consumer devices, the preference for consumer devices, the growing prevalence of cloud computing, the ubiquity of high-speed access, the ability to offload mobile traffic to the fixed network and the advantages to enterprises of changing information technology costs.

Gartner defines a BYOD strategy as an alternative strategy that allows employees, business partners and other users to use a personally selected and purchased client device to execute enterprise applications and access data. It typically spans smart phones and tablets, but the strategy may also be used for PCs. It may or may not include a subsidy.

Though enabled by cloud computing, the switch to user-supplied devices also will further drive cloud app adoption, since that is one way enterprises can enforce policies and allow access without the traditional support labor.

While BYOD is occurring in companies and governments of all sizes, it is most prevalent in midsize and large organizations ($500 million to $5 billion in revenue, with 2,500 to 5,000 employees). BYOD also permits smaller companies to go mobile without a huge device and service investment.

Adoption varies widely across the globe. Companies in the United States are twice as likely to allow BYOD as those in Europe, where BYOD has the lowest adoption of all the regions.

In contrast, employees in India, China and Brazil are most likely to be using a personal device, typically a standard mobile phone, at work.

Today, roughly half of BYOD programs provide a partial reimbursement, and full reimbursement for all costs will become rare.

Gartner believes that coupling the effect of mass market adoption with the steady declines in carrier fees, employers will gradually reduce their subsidies and as the number of workers using mobile devices expands, those who receive no subsidy whatsoever will grow.

As you might well expect, the BYOD change will affect enterprise spending on all manner of computing devices. The impact on enterprise IT spending also should be positive for enterprises but negative for existing suppliers of enterprise premises systems and gear.