U.S. Consumers Spend Nearly 12 Hours a Day Interacting with Content

In 2013, for the first time, the average amount of time U.S. consumers spend with digital media each day will surpass the amount of time they spend watching TV, according to eMarketer.

The average adult will spend over five hours each day online, on non-voice mobile activities or with other digital media in 2013, eMarketer estimates, compared to four hours and 31 minutes watching television.

How one measures time spent with media does involve a judgment call, though. Where eMarketer measures both time spent with a tablet, smart phone or PC when the TV also is on, others have different methodologies.

Nielsen reported fourth quarter 2012 media consumption of four hours and 39 minutes per day watching live TV, and an additional 25 minutes with DVR playback and 11 minutes with DVD playback. That adds up to 5 hours and 15 minutes spent with TV.

That is because Nielsen measures all time a TV is turned on, not the amount of time viewers are actually engaging with the medium.

In other cases, researchers also have to make judgment calls about the amount of time people are using their PCs.

Estimates for 2012 mobile content consumption likewise involve some judgment calls. According to MAGNAGLOBAL, mobile content consumption is just under an hour each day to two hours, but also including any time spent talking on a mobile device.'

Still, whatever the methodology or magnitude of usage, most observers would simply agree that consumers now engage with content, and video content, on numerous screens.

U.S adults will spend an average of two hours and 21 minutes per day on non-voice mobile activities, including mobile Internet usage on phones and tablets. That is more time than they will spend on desktop and notebook computers, and nearly an hour more than they spent on mobile last year, according to eMarketer.

Also, note that multitasking now is a major driver of such “time spent” measurements. When assessing “time spent with media,” eMarketer and others now have to account for times when a user has a TV on, and is watching, but also interacting on a tablet, smart phone or other PC device.

Such multitasking arguably now is driving the overall time people spend with media each day, which eMarketer expects to rise from 11 hours and 39 minutes in 2012 to 11 hours and 52 minutes in 2013.

Time spent with mobile has come to represent a little more than half of TV’s share of total media time, as well as more than half of digital media time as a whole, eMarketer notes.

The bulk of mobile time is spent on smart phones, at one hour and 7 minutes per day. Users spend one hour and three minutes a day on their tablets.

US Cellular Loses Customers in 2Q, Illustrates Trend

For its second quarter of 2013, United States Cellular Corporation reported service revenues of $911.0 million, compared to $1,029.7 million for the comparable period one year ago. That reflects asset sales, though.  

The real problem is a subscriber decline in US Cellular core markets, where organic growth is negative. The customer losses have been a problem since 2011.

That’s just one data point, but shows why consolidation in the U.S. mobile market will continue. It is getting harder for smaller regional providers to compete with the larger national providers.

Public-Private Access Venture the Answer for Oakland?

Ask anybody who has looked at, or is trying to stimulate, broadband access in places where access is spotty, or where higher speeds are wanted, and the revenue model or business model always becomes a top issue.

The reason is simple enough. If existing ISPs thought they could make money, they already would be providing service. So the key issue, for billions of people who have no access, is how to change the economics enough that a sustainable revenue model is possible.

In many cases, proponents believe public-private partnership is one way to prime the pump, even when other ISPs already operate. 

Is Google the New Bell Labs?

Some with long memories will remember the seminal innovations that were commercialized after incubation at Xeros PARC. Others might even have forgotten the many significant innovations developed inside AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Those with long enough memories also might agree that when the profit began to be ripped out of the telecommunications and information processing industries, such long-time-horizon incubators of seminal technologies became virtually impossible to support.

Increasingly, the focus of research acquired a more-urgent, quicker time to market character, with less support for innovations that might, or might not, result in new products with a commercial character.

But one might make an argument that, under chastened circumstances, the closest thing we now have to the legendary PARC or Bell Labs is Google.

That will frighten some, and cheer others. But some of us would have a hard time identifying any other entity that is doing work of such long-range potential that no commercial results could occur within a decade.

40-Gb Usage Cap for U.K. High Speed Access?

If you had to make a prediction today, based on just a couple of data points, you might argue that high speed access services in the U.K. market are headed for something like a 40-Gb usage cap per month, even if at the moment there still are several providers offering "unlimited" plans. 


Usage caps are blunt instruments, to be sure. Purists might argue that what matters are incentives for users to be careful at peak hours, when the danger of congestion is highest. 

That might argue for congestion pricing. But data caps seem right now to be a reasonable service provider compromise between usage-based pricing and unlimited-usage pricing, for most consumers. 

Consumers dislike usage pricing and service providers dislike the liability of virtually unlimited usage. Usage buckets are more blunt methods than perhaps using congestion pricing. But they are simpler and introduce some element of end user choice without unduly irritating customers or bearing unlimited liability. 

Median U.K. Mobile Data Consumption Up 70% in 1 Year

According to data collected by BillMonitor, the median U.K. mobile data user consumed 63 percent more data in January 2013 than in February 2012, representing median consumption of 236 MB, an annual increase of 70 percent.

It appears, as other studies have suggested, that 4G users consume at least an order of magnitude more mobile data. EE has said that subscribers to its 4G services used an average of 1.4 GB of data per month.

In May 2013, 4G users interviewed by YouGov SixthSense were a third of respondents. Of respondents aware of their consumptionm YouGov found that 29 percent of 4G

users consumed more than 1 GB per month.

About 47 percent said they used less than 500 MB per month. Some 44 percent of the smart phone users surveyed by Ofcom in April 2013 said that they would use their handset more if their mobile data connection was faster, a pattern that would mirror consumption trends for fixed network access as well.

Data collected by BillMonitor also found that the largest percentage increases in the consumption of mobile data were from the users with the lowest historic consumption. Users in the 25th percentile of usage increased their use of mobile data by 94 percent, equivalent to 106 percent on an annual basis.

Users in the 90th percentile increased their use of mobile data by 51 percent between 2012 and 2013, about 57 percent on an annual basis.

The 90th percentile consumers used 878 MB of data in January 2013, more than 3.7 times the consumption of the median user.

U.K. Telecom Market Revenues Drop for 4th Year in a Row

Overall revenue earned by all U.K. telecom service providers fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2012, driven by weakness in the wholesale segment of the business and voice services, according to the latest analysis by Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator.

The nearly two percent overall revenue shortfall of £0.7 billion (1.8 percent) resulted in annual revenues of  £38.8 billion, largely as a result of a £1.0 billion fall in wholesale revenues and weakness in voice services.

As you would expect, mobile and Internet access revenues grew.

Retail revenue increased by £0.2 billion to £27.5 billion during 2012. Business data services grew by £0.1 billion). In other words, consumers and businesses were spending slightly more, overall.

Mobile services revenue grew  £0.3 billion, while fixed network Internet access revenue grew  £0.3 billion, representing the growing parts of U.K. service provider revenues.

The weakness in the fixed network market came from voice services, which saw a £0.3 billion revenue decrease.

On average, a typical U.K. household increased its monthly spending on communications services by £1.31.

The total number of active mobile subscribers increased by 1.1 million in 2012, as did the

total number of fixed broadband connections.

During the year, the number of fixed broadband connections operating with a headline

speed of 30 Mbps or higher increased from 1.1 million to 3.3 million as consumers migrated

to faster services.

Call volumes from both fixed and mobile phones decreased in 2012, with the former down by eight billion minutes to 103 billion minutes and the latter down by one billion minutes to 122 billion minutes.