Will 90% of Mobile Traffic Be Terminated on Wi-Fi?

Public Wi-Fi hotspots will represent about 22 percent of tier-one mobile operator mobile Internet facilities in 2013, according to a survey of 200 executives in the Wi-Fi ecosystem. The survey respondents also believe that 78 percent of new small cell capacity will feature public Wi-Fi capabilities as well.

Public Wi-Fi capacity added by mobile service providers will grow at a 13 percent compound annual growth rate between 2012 and 2018, representing an additional  10.5 million sites in 2018.

The Asia-Pacific region will account for 55 percent of the deployments by 2018.

The total installed base of public Wi-Fi hotspots will reach over 55 million, globally, in 2018.

Residential access points where some capacity is left open for public access, is likely to top 100 million nodes by the end of 2018, the survey finds.

Outdoor hotspots were expected to drive most of the deployments, 46 percent of the respondents said.

As you might expect, the business model was a key issue for executives considering wider use of public Wi-Fi as part of the mobile network infrastructure, according to the Wireless Broadband Alliance.

If those forecasts are correct, one wonders how much traffic actually will be terminated using the mobile networks, since some mobile service providers already find that up to 80 percent of total traffic is terminated on a Wi-Fi network, mostly at-home or at-work fixed networks.

If just 10 percent of mobile network traffic is shifted to public Wi-Fi, it conceivable that 90 percent of total mobile handset traffic will be terminated on Wi-Fi networks, public and private.

The  survey of about 200 Wi-Fi ecosystem players was conducted by Maravedis-Rethink.

Czech 4G Auction Fails to Bring New Competition

Communications regulators and lawmakers frequently have incentives to “do something” about competition in communications markets. Whether or not such efforts succeed in the long term, there is value in being seen to “do something” in the near term.

In other words, what is eminently rational in political terms does not have to be equally rational in economic terms. It still is quite rational to “do something” widely viewed as promoting competition, even if there are reasonable expectations that the policies will not work.

Set asides for new competitors, spectrum caps or spectrum limits are some of the steps regulators can take to promote market entry by new competitors.

It isn’t so clear whether such tactics work, even in the short term.

The Czech Telecommunications Office, for example, had set aside rules for some blocks of Long Term Evolution spectrum in recently-held spectrum auctions. Only new entrants could bid for those blocks, initially.

Still, the auction, which raised CZK 8.5bn (EUR  311 million), was won by the three existing mobile phone companies (Spain's Telefonica, T-Mobile--the mobile arm of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG and the U.K.'s Vodafone Group).

Telefonica CR and T-Mobile CR bought two 800 MHz blocks, while Vodafone bought one 800 MHz block.

The three mobile companies also bought spectrum in the 1,800 and 2,600 MHz bands.

Revolution Mobile and Sazka Telecommunications dropped out of the bidding, even though

a 2x10 MHz block of spectrum was made available exclusively for new operators.

Will Amazon Web Services Be Worth $76 Billion in 2015?

If this revenue forecast is close to accurate, then Amazon Web Services, at a multiple of about eight times revenue, would be worth about $72 billion. Seriously. 

Mobile-Accessed Sites More Important in Some Industries Than Others

Mobile sites arguably are more important in some verticals than others. Travel comes to mind. But restaurants and bars might be among the industries most amenable to value created by mobile apps and websites.

After analyzing  traffic statistics of 14,000 websites over four years, Let's Eat, a builder of mobile app sites for the restaurant industry, notes that about half of all visits to restaurant websites consist of mobile traffic.

During the week, about a third of visits to restaurant-related sites come from mobile devices. On weekends, the percentage shoots up to nearly half of all visits. You can probably guess why that pattern exists.

During the week, when many people are at desks, it arguably is easy enough to check for a place to go eat from a PC. On weekends, when people are more likely to be out and about, using a mobile will often make more sense.

Mobile traffic has increased at a fairly regular rate over the last four years, from just three percent of traffic in October 2009 to 43 percent of restaurant site traffic in October 2013.

You also might not be surprised that population density affects use of mobile devices to get restaurant information. In urban areas associated with higher population density, people are more likely to be out and about during hours when restaurants are open, and needed.

Also, in smaller communities, it is more likely that people generally know where to find a particular restaurant or type of food.

Stockholm, London, Singapore are Global "Most Connected Cities"

The 2013 edition of Ericsson's Networked City Index ranks Stockholm, London and Singapore as top three cities among 31 measured. Few will be surprised.

Nor will many disagree with the “key finding” that information and communications technology is linked to societal, economic and environmental development. That's key language: "linked."

We sometimes like to overreach and argue that communications and information technologies "cause" economic and social development. All we really can say is that development and technology tend to be correlated.

People like lists. So the new latest Ericsson “Networked Society City Index will get attention, as will any list of sports team rankings. For some us research geeks, the methodology is more important than the list, though. 

The reason, as Ericsson says, is that “the most meaningful indicators are not always possible to measure or collect.” Some of us would add the correlation most of us assume exists between development and broadband is not "causation." It is correlation.

That said, few will quibble with the general results, which combines a number of key social, economic and environmental measures with affordability, usage and infrastructure metrics.

To be sure, everybody assumes there is a correlation between availability and use of communications and computing infrastructure, and economic and social development, in any city, or elsewhere.

The problem is that the clear correlations are not necessarily causation. Nobody really can say with absolute certainty that cities “cause” economic growth, or that growth causes cities to form.

The same “correlation without causation” can be said to exist for economic activity and broadband access, for example. We assume that good communications infrastructure contributes to economic growth. It is a reasonable assumption, if hard to prove.

Some might go further and say such infrastructure causes growth. That is where we step into a realm of belief, not science, as rational as we might try to be.

Most would agree there is correlation between high quality broadband access and economic and societal health and activity. That is why most will tend to agree with the rankings, at a high level.

That is simply to say the city index is like most human efforts at “doing science.” We can in many cases describe how something works, but we cannot always answer “why” something works (“What is the purpose?”)

We can describe inputs and outputs, and often the obvious immediate causal processes but we cannot assess “causation” in a metaphysical and universal way (“why does the universe exist?”).

At Some Point, Legacy Networks are Too Expensive to Operate

According to the Federal Communications Commission, the number of landline customers in Michigan dropped from 6.7 million in 2000 to 2.6 million in 2012. Meanwhile, the number of wireless customers jumped from 3.5 million in 2000 to 9.3 million in 2012.

In other words, there were in 2012 only 39 percent of fixed lines in service; the rest were fallow. By definition, that means the remaining customers have to cover the fixed costs of the whole network.

No doubt, there are reasons some customers prefer to keep their legacy "plain old telephone service" lines. At some point, it will not be financially possible to keep the old network operating, whatever the public service value of doing so.

That doesn't mean fixed networks will not provide voice; they will. But it will be IP-based voice, not TDM. Like it or not, we are approaching a time when the legacy network has to be shut down, as it will not be possible to pay for its operation.

TV White Spaces Business Model an Issue for CIO Group

For nearly all speakers at the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance Global Summit in Bangkok--but not all--there was not any doubt that TV white spaces and other new spectrum sources “should” be released for commercial use to support rural broadband access, ISP backhaul, machine to machine services, mobile operator or fixed operator small cell services, campus networks or additional local Wi-Fi distribution.

George Kintanar, chairman of the Philippines-based Chief Information Officers Forum, a group representing government technology chiefs, was a notable agnostic (naysayer, doubter or skeptic are too strong to describe his position).

It isn’t that Kintanar is opposed to release of more spectrum, especially TV white spaces, for commercial deployment. In fact, the CIO Forum is looking at the issue now.

And, as you might guess, he has the perspective of an end user when evaluating TV white spaces technology.

As an “enterprise user,” he wants a sustainable technology that will attract new service providers who will be around for the long term.

In other words, the last thing he wants to back is a technology that fails to become sustainable, since non-sustainable communications solutions, by definition, are too risky for enterprise buyers.

So the issue for potential enterprise and government buyers is whether enabling use of TV white spaces spectrum will be good for buyers of communication services, over time, or is exposed to the risk of failure. WiMAX might provide one example.

The risk could take any number of forms, including the danger that investors will not see a path to investment returns, meaning networks taking advantage of TV white spaces will not be built, or if built, will not remain in operation.

A related problem are sustainable business models offering the prospect of permanence, stability and further development over time.

The fact that some brand TV white spaces as “super Wi-Fi” suggests the concern. To the extent that TV white spaces winds up as a sort of “commons” approach to spectrum use, as Wi-Fi represents, Kintanar likely voices the concerns of many enterprise and governmental users of communication services.

If access to the spectrum is “without cost,” what is the incentive for new suppliers to create access services (new ways for enterprise and government buyers to source connections to the Internet and communication services, as opposed to “mere” local distribution within a building from an existing network access service?

In other words, Kintanar wants to see evidence of sustainable value for both buyers and providers, as that is the only way TV white spaces will thrive, long term.

But Kintanar’s concerns are so pronounced for one specific reason. “We want new entrants,” Kintanar says.

In part, that means new providers, presumably ISPs of some sort, will have to create value and satisfactory revenue models, while competing with the incumbent ISPs.

At least some other attendees thought that would be a key long term challenge. “The rule of three” suggests, in the end, only a few providers will be able to survive, or represent 80 percent or more of the revenue generated by providing those new services, one attendee suggested.

That seems to lie at the heart of Kintanar’s concern, as well. “Is there a business model?” he asked. For some, it is self evident a business model will be found. Kintanar, at least for the moment, wants more proof.