Voice Still Drives Net New Subscriber Accounts, Globally

To the extent that service provider revenue is driven by net subscriber additions, mobile voice accounts remain the global growth driver in 2014, though mobile broadband is assuming a bigger role.

Fixed broadband net additions will be roughly flat through 2018, Infonetics Research predicts.

That pattern has been in place for several years, particularly since the Great Recession of 2008.

source: Infonetics Research

In the U.S. market, for example, the number of consumers using fixed network voice lines has dropped by about 50 percent. Other surveys have shown the same trend.

A 2012 survey of buyers of wholesale voice services showed a belief that the most disruptive trends in the voice business included declining use of the fixed network for voice, as well as VoIP over mobile networks.

source: inetwork

Chapel Hill to Get Gigabit Access from AT&T

Chapel Hill, N.C. will get a gigabit access service provided by AT&T. Durham, N.C., Cary, N.C., Raleigh, N.C. and Winston-Salem, N.C. also are getting GigaPower service.

As many as 100 other cities in 21 metropolitan areas are potentially candidates for "GigaPower" service, AT&T says.

They include Atlanta, Augusta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, Greensboro, Houston, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Oakland, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, St. Louis, San Francisco, and San Jose.

With previously announced markets, AT&T now has committed to or is exploring about 25 metro areas for fiber deployment.

FreedomPop to Introduce Sponsored Data Access

AT&T has been criticized in some quarters for supporting a “sponsored data ” retail model where content or other sponsors pay for mobile data charges to support end user consumption of some particular apps.

The concern is that such practices contribute to creation of a multi-tiered or two-tier Internet where some apps and services are more favored than others, even when--or perhaps precisely because--the feature is available to all content and app providers.

But such sponsored data consumption has been tried in a number of developing markets, typically to encourage use of social apps. And though there has been some criticism of sponsored data, even major app providers are working to do so.

Pryte, for example, now owned by Facebook, specializes in creating platforms that allow service or app providers to collaborate in offering such sponsored app programs.

Now there is more movement in the direction of sponsored data consumption, this time by FreedomPop, the Internet access provider attempting to disrupt the pricing of mobile and untethered Internet access in the U.S. market.

FreedomPop is planning a Pryte-style “pay as you app” feature allowing users to buy data allowances for specific apps, including both a “buy what you need” offer and a “no incremental cost” offer using a sponsored data approach.

Here’s the point: such forms of innovation do not strictly “treat all apps alike.” The plans provide direct and clear end user value, but not on a “universal” basis. As so often is the case, there is a choice: treat all apps alike, and not provide value in an innovative and consumer-friendly way, or insist rigidly on treating all apps alike, and not providing that value.

China Argues for "Internet Sovereignty"

Each country should have ultimate power to determine what Internet traffic flows in and out of its territory, China's Communist Party believes. Such Internet sovereignty does of course raise issues about the original "anyone can communicate with anyone else" origins of the Internet, but that is a time long passed.



In practice, the Internet is substantially fragmented, and it is no longer true that anyone can speak to anyone else, as it no longer is true that anyone can use any Internet app or service. 



That is one reason why controversies about "Internet freedom" these days are relative. An equally big problem is the casual way many unrelated controversies are said to involve disputes about what freedom remains. 



It isn't helpful to equate application blocking with network management or managed services or quality of service. There is room for disagreement within the ecosystem about such matters. 



What isn't particularly helpful is the overly-broad depiction of all other issues as instances where actual "freedom to use applications"  is curtailed or restricted in important ways. 



Blocking apps is one category of "freedom" issues. But not all other issues are similarly weighty.

Creating End User Value Often Requires Treating "Internet Apps" Unequally

Twitter has crafted a new partnership with Indonesia’s Indosat, to streamline the signup process for new users who want to receive World Cup-related tweets.

The arrangement is the first of its kind in Asia-Pacific and one of several that are being rolled out during the World Cup in emerging markets like Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ghana and Latin America.

Under the arrangement with Indosat, which has some 59.7 million mobile subscribers, users can type in a code or visit a URL using their Android or iOS phones.

Users are then allowed to create a new account, pick their favorite World Cup team and select a corresponding profile image. They can then chose various specialized accounts to follow, such as World Cup players.

Business terms are unknown, but the deal does raise the issue of how innovative features that provide value to end users can be created without some exclusivity, uniqueness or ease of use features that are not available to all apps.

That sort of uniqueness, some might argue, does not “treat all apps” equally. More and more of these sorts of features are bound to be created. Each might indicate some of the real-world objections to the concept that “treating all apps equally” is a logically sound way to frame the network neutrality debate.

Sprint Counters T-Mobile US "Test Drive" and Zero-Rated Music Consumption

The new T-Mobile US "test drive" program, which allows the first million takers to test an Apple iPhone 5C for seven days, without obligation to buy the device or keep the service, has been countered by Sprint, which now offers a 30-day money back guarantee for new potential customers.

The satisfaction guarantee allows new customers who are not satisfied with the Sprint experience to cancel within the first 30 days, with Sprint refunding the cost of the device and waiving all service and activation charges.

The satisfaction guarantee is available beginning June 27, 2014 to new consumers and select small corporate liable customers who activate a new line of service at a Sprint company owned store or preferred retailer, by calling 1-800-SPRINT1 or using www.sprint.com/network.

The guarantee also is available to current customers adding new lines of service in a Sprint store, online at sprint.com or by calling 1-800-SPRINT1.

Some might argue Sprint already was in position to essentially “zero rate” use of streaming music services, as T-Mobile US has announced, since it already had offered unlimited unlimited mobile data plans.

Oddly enough, though many mobile service providers are moving away from “unlimited” data plans, we might see the return of a modified form of such plans, on a wider scale, if and when for-fee mobile video streaming services become more popular.

As contentious as the issue might be, that zero rating of bandwidth is essentially what cable TV, satellite TV and telco TV firms already do, as a standard practice. The cost of a linear video subscription video plan is embedded in the cost of using the service, and does not impose a separate bandwidth charge.

That’s the difference between a managed service and an over the top Internet accessed service. So zero rating of bandwidth consumption could eventually re-emerge, if not in a full “unlimited” Internet bandwidth offer.

There will be fierce debates, but managed voice, video and other services are not “Internet” apps (from a regulatory perspective), it will be argued, and not without merit.

Maybe Amazon Fire is Not Supposed to Be About Smartphone Share

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners has estimated that roughly 40 percent of all Amazon shoppers own a Kindle device and that those shoppers on average spend $1,233 with the retailer annually, which is $443, or 56 percent, more than the $790 non-Kindle owners spend with the retailer each year.

CIRP surveyed 300 Amazon.com shoppers online from Nov. 15, 2013 to Nov. 18, 2013,  about their Amazon purchasing behavior in the previous 90 days. As more retail activity starts to happen on smartphones, something like that also could develop for Amazon-centric smartphones.

It’s a gamble, to be sure. It is a management distraction, to be sure. But the objective might not be so much “competition with other smartphone suppliers” as “competition with other major retailers,” including Apple and Google, to name a few.

The prediction that Amazon is too late to make a dent in smartphone market share is reasonable enough. Some might say Amazon has failed to take lots of share in the tablet market, as well.

Amazon arguably is playing a different game. It might not so much want to be a leading force in tablets or smartphones so much as it wants to secure greater share of the online retailing market.

It is true that Amazon retail operations can be conducted from non-Amazon devices as well as its own. But Amazon might rightly believe that its most-loyal, or biggest-spending customers, tend to use Kindles or might use an Amazon Fire smartphone.

It is a gamble. But we won’t know the outcome for some time. Amazon’s experience with tablets might be the template.

“One way to look at the Kindle Fire and Kindle e-reader is as a portal to Amazon.com,” says Mike Levin, partner and co-founder of CIRP. “Kindle Fire provides access to everything Amazon sells, while the Kindle e-reader has become the way that Amazon customers buy books, Amazon’s original product line.”

Amazon Fire might not be as important as Amazon Prime as a driver of  loyalty or repeat buying behavior. But it might not be insignificant, either.

U.S. retail spending on mobile devices is expected to reach $57.8 billion in 2014, representing 19 percent of total e-commerce sales, according to eMarketer. That is more than double the dollar figure spent in 2012. By 2018, eMarketer sees mobile commerce rising to $132.7 billion or 27 percent of e-commerce sales.

Amazon Fire is a gamble on snagging more of that growth.