Does a Mandatory Price of "Zero" Make Sense for All Carrier and Customer Connections?

Are application domains “customers” of service provider domains, or are app domains “carriers?”  

The definition matters, the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies argues.

If app domains are customers, then a mandated  “zero price ” (settlement free interconnection regardless of the volume of traffic exchanged) does not square with traditional common carrier thinking about inter-carrier interconnection, which is volume sensitive.

But if app domains are carriers, instead of customers, common carrier regulation also suggests that a mandatory “zero price” for interconnection also violates traditional pricing logic?

Clearly, the bulk of traffic exchanged by app domains and retail customer domains (app providers the former: communications service providers the latter) is downstream from the content domains rather than upstream from the CSP domains, by about a ratio of

6:1, according to Sandvine.

StarBand Shuts Down

Retail telecom markets might not be the “winner take all” markets so typical of the consumer applications business. But retail telecom tends to be an oligopoly, eventually.

So it is that StarBand, which has been providing satellite Internet access for about 15 years, has shut down. In the U.S. market, where Starband had competed, Hughes Network Systems, owned by Echostar, is the market leader with about 54 percent share, according to Comsys.

WildBlue has most of the rest of the market share  as has been true for the past half decade.

StarBand simply was too small to compete, it appears.

Google Maps’ New “Night Mode” Feature Makes It Easier To Navigate In The Dark | TechCrunch

Google Maps Night Mode will be easier on the eyes when using turn-by-turn navigation in the dark. When in turn-by-turn navigation, the screen is dimmed.  It is available for Apple iOS and soon for Android. It's a useful tweak.

FCC may include mobile in next broadband report

As more people come to rely on mobile Internet access for a major portion of their total Internet activity, it just makes sense to include data on mobile access as part of the total Internet access situation in any country, including the United States.



The Federal Communications Commission probably will do so.

Charter Will Get into Mobile: Just Needs to Figure Out the Business Model

Assuming the Charter Communications acquisition of Time Warner Cable succeeds, mobility strategy is likely to come to the fore.

“Should we have a mobile product...and the answer is yes, we should ultimately figure out how to create our service infrastructure everywhere we are and where our customers are,” said Tom Rutledge, Charter Communications CEO.

“We continue to rollout our Wi-Fi product and the bulk of wireless activity on smartphones today is on the Wi-Fi product that we've deployed,” Rutledge said. “And so I think there are opportunities, business opportunities to create mobility for us whether that's with T-Mo or any other provider for that matter.”

Will Triple Play Reach its Limits?

There is sound logic to the triple play. It basically represents a business model built on scope rather than scale. In other words, you sell more things to fewer customers, instead of a few things to more customers.

But are there limits to the model? At some level, yes. Up to this point, only four services have proven to be high-volume services “most” people will consider buying: voice, mobility, TV and Internet access.

In a competitive market, where the number of subscribers or accounts is limited, bundling works because it allows a service provider to sell more things to fewer people.

For a firm such as Cablevision Systems Corp., that means revenue still can grow, even if the number of new accounts is flat to declining.

Cablevision reported “Improved subscriber performance with largest quarterly gains in both customer relationships and high-speed data, in more than two years,” in its second quarter of 2015.

Average monthly cable revenue per customer of $158.52 was an increase of $5.80 or 3.8 percent, compared with the same quarter of 2014.

“Customer relationships” is not the same thing as “accounts,” but an indication of total services sold to any single account.

So the bundle still works for Cablevision. But there are limits. Unless at least one major new revenue source is found, Cablevision will eventually find it cannot simply keep raising prices to maintain revenue volume.

And by “major” one might suggest a new revenue source the size of voice, entertainment video, mobility or Internet access.

At some point, without discovery of a major new consumer revenue source, or new sources outside the consumer sphere, Cablevision’s bundling strategy will falter--as it will for any service provider--as consumers balk at ever-higher prices.

Why 5G Partnerships are the Rage

NEC Corporation is working with KT Corporation on fifth generation (5G) next-generation mobile networks. Such agreements are commonplace these days.

SK Telecom is working with Ericsson. Nokia is working with NTT. Huawei is working with Softbank. The European Union and Japan also are working together on 5G. China Mobile is working with Alcatel-Lucent.  

What might be instructive, though, is the range of technologies and platforms NEC and KT are exploring in relation to 5G: Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Management and Network Orchestration (MANO).

That might be the larger point. One reason so many efforts are underway is that 5G will be the most-comprehensive mobile network generation ever launched, requiring much more than an air interface and modulation protocols.

In a real sense, 5G is a complete network vision, not a radio or mobile air interface, speaking to application support and full network performance, not just the radio link.

In other words, 5G represents the most-complex next generation network ever attempted in the mobile realm. And that’s the point: 5G is not restricted to the mobile realm.

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Qualcomm and Ericsson will present their visions of coming 5G networks at the Spectrum Futures conference, Sept. 10 and 11, 2015, in Singapore.

Other confirmed speakers will discuss spectrum sharing between LTE operators, spectrum sharing between Wi-Fi and LTE, new access platforms and the critical role spectrum plays for coming 5G networks.

At the same time, the intimate relationship between applications (Internet of Things), core networks (SDN. NFV, cloud computing, fog computing) and all access networks will be examined.

In the coming next generation network, clearly separating spectrum and mobile networks from Wi-Fi and fixed network access, core networks and cloud infrastructure, will be nearly impossible.

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