Facebook Has 69 Million Indonesian Users

Facebook has some 69 million monthly active users in populous Indonesia, according to Anand Tilak, Facebook’s Indonesia head. That’s a six percent increase from the 65 million users Facebook reported six months ago.



Indonesian smartphone penetration is just 23 percent, underscoring the role key apps such as Facebook are deemed to play in creating demand for smartphone usage. 

Content Consumption Has Shifted to Mobile Devices

Mobile devices now are the dominant content-consumption devices, in terms of “time spent,” surpassing personal computers.

Mobile platforms, including both smartphones and tablets, represented 60 percent of total digital media time, up from 50 percent in 2013.

Several key content categories have shifted almost exclusively to mobile.

Digital Radio, led by category leader Pandora now generates more than 96 percent of its total engagement from mobile devices.

Engagement with photos--especially Instagram and Flickr--also occurs 96 percent of the time on mobile devices.

Other categories getting at least 90 percent of their engagement time from mobile include maps (Google Maps, Apple Maps) and instant messenger (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber) apps.

Social networking now generates more than 70 percent of its activity on mobile devices.

Mobile apps accounted for more than half of all digital media time spent in May 2014, coming in at 51 percent, according to comScore.

source: comScore

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.