Charter Makes Bid for Time Warner Cable

In a move virtually all observers expected, Charter Communications is making a bid to buy all of Time Warner Cable for about $55.1 billion in cash and stock.

Among other things, the deal would cement the leading position of cable TV operators in the fixed network high speed Internet access market. After the deal, the two largest providers would be cable TV companies. The first telco, AT&T would rank only third, in terms of subscribers.

Cable TV companiesj would hold three of the top four subscriber rankings for fixed network Internet access.

Bright House Networks, a smaller cable company that Charter is trying to buy, and which traditionally has acted in concert with Time Warner Cable, will also be merged into the combined entity.

If the deals are approved, and most believe they will be approved, would make Charter the clear number-two U.S. cable TV provider, in terms of subscriber share, and would further concentrate the industry.

Charter would have about 17.8 million video subscribers, trailing Comcast with up to 22.3 million. The new number three provider would be Cablevision Systems Corp., at 2.6 million video subscribers.

Many observers would say video market share, while important, is not as important as high speed access market share.

Looked at it those terms, Comcast would have 22.4 million high speed access accounts, the largest share in the fixed network industry. Among cable TV firms, Charter would be the clear number two with up to 20 million Internet access subscribers.

Cablevision Systems Corp. likewise would be the third-largest U.S. cable TV operator in terms of Internet access subscribers.

In the fixed network segment overall, the Internet access rankings would include Comcast at number one, Charter number two, AT&T at about 16 million ranking third.

Verizon would rank fourth, with about 9.2 million Internet access subs. CenturyLink would rank fifth, Cablevision Systems sixth and Frontier Communications seventh.

Mobile Internet Access Prices are Dropping

Affordability is a key problem for use of the Internet in many developing markets, including India. The good news is that service prices and the cost of devices are dropping.

In India, 20 percent of smartphone users top up their data plans daily. In the Philippines, 60 percent of smartphone users top up daily.

In Nigeria, 56 percent of users top up daily.

Because they’re buying the smallest packages of data they can afford, they miss out on the cost savings of purchasing larger ones.

To be sure, prices are dropping. Portio Research estimates that the cost per megabyte of mobile data around the world decreased by 93 percent from 2008 to 2012.

In Latin America, GSMA observed that the monthly price of low-end smartphone data plans (250 Mb usage cap) fell from USD 17.68 in 2010 to USD 8.33 in 2013, a decline of 52 percent in just three years.

Plans with a higher usage cap (1GB) also saw significant declines, dropping 37 percent annually from 2010 to 2013, from USD 23.07 to USD 14.44

 When you look at the cost of a 500 MB mobile data plan in relation to income, it’s pretty clear to see why 50 percent of smartphone users in India deactivate their data plans. 

Top 25 Android Mobile Apps in India

Communications and sharing information are the leading apps for India mobile users on Android devices, Jana reports. You'd expect that to be the case. 

About the only thing not done on a mobile is heavy content creation. 

If You Can Aggregate Enough Spectrum, 10 Gbps Per Device is Possible

Channel bonding is how digital subscriber line and DOCSIS 3.1 bandwidths have grown. The same principle will allow 5G and future generations of mobile networks to provide gigabits to every connected device. 

Huawei: Paving the Way to 5G from Zahid Ghadialy

Has Prepaid Growth Stalled?

Has the decades-long growth of the U.S. prepaid mobile phone business hit its limit?

The assumption, over more than a decade, has been that prepaid would continue growing, as a percentage of total mobile accounts, for several reasons.

In most markets, incremental users tend to be lighter users, more cost conscious users and therefore tend to spend less on a product.

Recently, postpaid services have become more competitive with prepaid services, making the type of payment plan a possibly lesser adoption factor.

The ability to buy postpaid service without a contract, for example, also narrows the gap between prepaid and postpaid. Traditionally, one advantage of prepaid was that using it did not require users to sign a contract. But service without a contract now is possible in the postpaid realm as well.

And promotions linked to the U.S. mobile marketing war mean the price of using postpaid has dropped.

At least two of the top-four service providers also are less stringent about credit policies, traditionally one reason many consumers use prepaid.

Inability to offer the Apple iPhone undoubtedly slowed demand for prepaid services as well.  

Some leading prepaid brands are encountering dramatically slower growth, while repaid revenue and subscriptions seem still to be growing, but at a slower rate.

Growth continues, but at a very-slight rate, so a reasonable assumption, based on history, is that the trend will continue.

Over the past decade, prepaid plans generally has been growing. In 2014, T-Mobile US said it was the largest prepaid provider in the U.S. market. And many forecasts suggest U.S. prepaid revenue will keep growing.  

Sprint's most recent quarter showed a loss of a net 201,000 postpaid phone accounts during the quarter and a net 546,000 prepaid phone, and 349,000 net prepaid tablet accounts. The trend is clear: Sprint is losing postpaid and gaining prepaid accounts.

T-Mobile US, in its most-recent quarter (first quarter of 2015), added 991,000 postpaid phone customers and 134,000 postpaid mobile broadband customers.

T-Mobile also added 73,000 branded prepaid customers quarter, as well as 620,000 wholesale customers in the period, including 479,000 mobile virtual network operator  customers and 141,000 M2M connections.

So one might conclude that, at Sprint, prepaid net additions continue to accumulate. At T-Mobile US, prepaid net adds vastly lagged postpaid additions.

So maybe T-Mobile US is converting prepaid users to postpaid, even if Sprint continues to grow prepaid share.

The prepaid market seems to be at a point where future growth could go either way: up or down.

How Architecture Solves LeoSat Stranded Asset Problem

Stranded assets are a big problem for fixed network operators when markets are highly competitive.

The big issue is that, in an instance where there are two providers, equally competent, half of each network’s access assets are stranded.

In a market with three equally competent contestants, as much as 66 percent of deployed network assets could easily be stranded.

That is a similar problem, historically, for low earth orbit satellite networks, which “spend most of the time flying over uninhabited areas,” notes LeoSat CEO Vern Fotheringham.

But LeoSat thinks it has an answer for stranded assets. By using direct satellite to satellite links and a mesh architecture, LeoSat can carry live, paid-for traffic over the entire fleet, all the time. That means the stranded asset problem essentially is solved.

Even a satellite flying over an ocean can be relaying traffic, essentially functioning as a simple signal repeat station.

The state of the art today is about 6 Gbps between adjacent satellites, but speeds up to 24 Gbps might be possible if free space optics can be adapted. Intra-plane speeds would be higher than inter-plane connections, Fotheringham says.

There would be other advantages. The signals “can’t be tapped into, from the ground, so the constellation would have better security than a terrestrial network,” Fotheringham says.

In principle, LeoSat signals also would travel at the speed of light, with not glass-imposed impedance. Since the LeoSat signals would move through a vacuum, they would travel at the full speed of light.

And though the total amount of backhaul would be modest, compared to the undersea cable network, that could change, over some decades, he says.

On the Tokyo to New York route, undersea latency is 280 milliseconds. LeoSat believes it will feature latency of just 90 milliseconds. For some apps, such as high frequency trading, that might matter.

The big change in business case, however, is a huge reduction of stranded asset issues.

Google Maps: Does Knowing "Why" Matter?

If you’ve ever been stuck in an airport with a delayed flight, you understand why information about “why” there is a delay is valuable, even if that information does not actually get you moving any sooner.

Google Maps already suggests alternative routes, but now it will tell users “why” it recommends a particular route.

It’s a subtlety, but probably will have value for the same reason knowing “why” a plane is delayed is helpful.

Starting today, Google Maps will provide more detailed alternative routes and notifications about traffic conditions.

if congestion lies ahead, Google Maps will provide an estimate of  how long you’ll be stuck in a traffic jam.

Aside from telling you where and what, the alerts and suggestions also give you the why. Google Maps explains why a certain traffic condition is taking place and, in case of an alternate route, why that path might be better.

The new feature might be a rather small tweak. But some of us would guess the value will be rather higher than the tweak might seem.