92% of 2014 Mobile Devce Models Produced by Asian Suppliers

Why this matters: if you are a policymaker or regulator in any country where you believe mobile devices or mobile apps represent a growth industry, you will feel pressure to encourage the device or app segment of the mobile and Internet ecosystem, possibly even to the detriment of the Internet service provider or other segments of the ecosystem.

If, on the other hand, one believes a domestic device or app industry is unlikely to develop, it is rational to take steps to encourage the ISP segment of the ecosystem. 

The device and apps business tends to develop on a "winner take all" pattern.

If so,  the tasks in most countries will tend to center on supporting ISPs and access availability, there being little possibility of fostering a globally-significant device or apps industry. 

Consumer Segment a bright spot for BT Revenue

BT faces many issues in common with other European Community telecom service providers, with flat to declining revenue growth being the most salient issue.

BT also faces the possible divestiture of its wholesale Openreach business, representing about 28 percent of total revenue. BT obviously considers the ownership of that chunk of the business important, in part because it represents a stable revenue segment.

Virtually all other revenue drivers have fallen since the 2009/2010 financial year, with the exception of the consumer segment, where sales of video subscriptions are growing.

The consumer segment represents about 24 percent of total revenue.

Mobile net additions and high speed access also show growth.

In the most-recent quarter ending June 30, 2015, revenue was down about two percent.

Global Services dropped about six percent, while BT Business dropped about two percent.

The consumer segment grew three percent while wholesale shrank about one percent.

Openreach was essentially flat.

Why 15% Non-Internet User Base is Not a Long Term Problem

A stubborn 15 percent  of U.S. adults do not use the Internet, according to the Pew Research Center.

The size of this group has changed little over the past three years, despite recent government and social service programs to encourage internet adoption.

Two observations: perhaps we sometimes forget that people have the right to exercise lawful choice. If people do not want to use the Internet, as much as we might think they “should,” they have the right to refuse, for any reason.

At some point, in any business or endeavor, the last increment of progress is so costly it is rational to consider not bothering to achieve it, and allocating effort and resources to some other important problem where the input will achieve greater results.

The other observation is that we have seen such technology laggard behavior before. Such problems fix themselves, assuming the innovation is widely perceived to have value.

The point is that the 15 percent of people who do not use the Internet may not wish to use it, and that the number of non-users will likely fall to insignificance over a relatively short period of time, if only because “using the Internet” will take so many forms that people may not even recognize.

Traditionally, some non-users have said they simply do not want to use the Internet.

A 2013 Pew Research survey found 34 percent of non-users did not go online because they had no interest in doing so or did not think the internet was relevant to their lives.

Some 32 percent of non-internet users said the internet was too difficult to use.

Cost was also a barrier for some adults who were offline and 19 percent cited the expense of internet service or owning a computer.

One might argue that the “owning a computer” will be a minimal problem in the future, since all smartphones will provide that function, as will tablets. With the spread of Wi-Fi, private and public, we also can reasonably assume that the cost of access will cease to be a real problem.

The latest Pew Research analysis continues to show that internet non-adoption is correlated to a number of demographic variables, including age, educational attainment, household income, race and ethnicity, and community type, as most would expect.

Seniors are the group most likely to say they never go online. About 39 percent of people 65 and older do not use the internet, compared with only three percent of 18- to 29-year-olds.

Over time, that implies non-use will be a status three percent or fewer people actually have. We can assume that free Wi-Fi will be plentiful enough that the cost of access will not be a real barrier. Nor will devices, as smartphone adoption will be nearly universal.

Rural Americans are about twice as likely as those who live in urban or suburban settings to “never” use the internet.

Racial and ethnic differences are also evident. One-in-five blacks and 18% of Hispanics do not use the internet, compared with 14% of whites and only 5% of English-speaking Asian-Americans – the racial or ethnic group least likely to be offline.

Despite some groups having persistently lower rates of internet adoption, the vast majority of Americans are online.

Over time, the offline population has been shrinking, and for some groups that change has been especially dramatic.

For example, 86 percent of adults 65 and older did not go online in 2000; today that figure has been cut in half.

And among those without a high school diploma, the share not using the internet dropped from 81 percent to 33 percent in the same time period. The other issue is whether mobile apps “count” as Internet use, since many population groups over-index for smartphone usage.

The point is that, over time, the percentage of people who do not use the Internet will naturally drop nearly to zero. Chasing the last increment of change, when change will come even if we do almost nothing, might not be the best use of resources and effort.  

Sri Lanka to Provide Google Project Loon Internet Access

Sri Lanka has become the first country to support deployment of Google Project Loon-based Internet access.

The initiative is reportedly going to offer free access across the entire country.

Whether that is correct or not is unclear to some of us. Some reports suggest a wholesale network is envisioned, with mobile operators and other ISPS able to buy access.

Though that does not necessarily work against the notion of "free access," it suggests access will not ordinarily be provided free of charge by all potential ISPs, though some likely will try to do so.

Many details remain unclear. Project Loon recently has been testing Long Term Evolution 4G access, havind concluded that direct use of the Wi-Fi protocol was impractical.

The extent of 4G across Sri Lanks might be an issue. Involvement of mobile operators therefore would seem to be imperative, but nothing so far has been released about mobile operator participation.

The other logical approach would be to use 3G protocols rather than 4G.

“The entire Sri Lankan island--every village from (southern) Dondra to (northern) Point Pedro--will be covered with affordable high speed internet using Google Loon’s balloon technology,” said Sri Lanka Minister of Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera.

Officials also said local ISPs will have access to the balloons, reducing their operational costs.

According to Muhunthan Canagey, head of local authority the Information and Communication Technology Agency, Google is expected to finish sending up the balloons by next March 2016.

The agreement between Google and the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) did not immediately detail any other commercial agreements, such as whether the services will be sold at wholesale to retail ISPs and mobile service providers, and if so, on what terms.

But it will be tough to compete with “free,” if Sri Lanka’s government itself provides free access at speeds comparable to mobile Internet access.

There are 2.8 million mobile Internet subscribers and 606,000 fixed line Internet subscribers among Sri Lanka's more than 20 million population.

Up to 33% of All Cable TV Locations Might be Able to Buy Access Exceeding 1 Gbps by 2017

It sometimes is hard to immediately grasp the importance of new protocols in the broader telecommunications business, and DOCSIS 3.1 is no different.

The latest generation of a standard used extensively by the global cable TV industry supports access bandwidth up to 10 Gbps over standard hybrid fiber coax networks used by cable operators.

New research by IHS Infonetics suggests cable operators globally will have at least 33 percent of residential subscribers able to use by DOCSIS 3.1-enabled headends by April 2017.

That means an ability to provider bandwidth exceeding a gigabit, where the headend deployments are matched by modems supporting the standard, and where sufficient bandwidth is available to do so.

Facebook to Discuss Faster Internet Access At Spectrum Futures

Facebook will provide its views on the importance of rapid increases in Internet access globally, as well as what it is doing to support faster Internet access across the South Asia, Southeast Asia and global markets at Spectrum Futures, to be held in Singapore Sept. 10-11, 2015. 

Chris Weasler, Facebook global head of spectrum policy and connectivity planning, or Kevin Martin, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will provide the update. 

The M Hotel Singapore  |  10-11 September 2015

Why Facebook cares about Internet access across Asia REGISTER NOW Spectrum Futures 2015 will look at platforms and policies to connect the next two billion Internet users in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Spectrum Futures 2015 brings together regulators and service providers from throughout the Asia-Pacific region to allow the exchange of ideas about key policies to help emerging markets like India, the Phillipines, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and Myanmar connect to their populations to the Internet within the next decade.

VISIT THE SPECTRUM FUTURES WEBSITE FOLLOW US ON

Hard to Tell How Much Market Share in Cloud Computing the Big Four Actually Have

Will the cloud infrastructure or cloud apps businesses be characterized by the same “winner take all” pattern that seems to be true of most consumer Internet apps? Perhaps not, as cloud computing is an enterprise service, purchased by businesses and other entities, not mostly by end users directly.

Perhaps the question is more narrowly whether the cloud infrastructure market will have a winner take all structure over the long term.

The answer might be harder to glean than first appears. On the surface, four providers seem to hold commanding market share leads, namely Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google.

The problem is that each firm counts different revenue sources within its “cloud revenue” total. Amazon likely is the biggest supplier of pure-play infrastructure as a service. Others might be bigger on software as a service or platform as a service, particularly Microsoft and IBM.

That is why some believe Amazon actually has a bigger market share than generally believed, in the core computing as a service market.

IBM has cloud revenue of $7.7 billion, but a big chunk of that comes from "hybrid cloud," which involves companies buying both hardware and software. Its more comparable "as-a-service" business is will only pull in $3.8 billion.

Microsoft boasts cloud revenues representing a $6.3 billion revenue run rate. Most of that revenue likely comes from Office 365, however. While that clearly is SaaS revenue, it is not computing as infrastructure revenue.

“The cloud infrastructure services market is quite clearly bifurcating with a widening gap between the big four cloud providers and the rest of the service provider community,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “

source: Business Insider