Unified Wi-Fi, Mobile, Satellite Backhual Using Millimeter Waves?

It increasingly is clear that 5G and low earth satellite technologies are intimately related, as are core networks based on network functions virtualization and access-agnostic edge networks, fixed and mobile networks generally.

As a new paper by Samsung Electronics suggests, mobile 5G and LEOs might both take advantage of millimeter wave frequencies, with the LEOS serving as backhaul for mobile transmitters or direct enterprise backhaul links.

If a unified millimeter wave set of networks (satellite, mobile, Wi-Fi) can be created, small cell networks would be essential. But that might be easier than at present, since Wi-Fi nodes directly served by LEO constellations would be possible.

Think of the present village kiosk, served by a geostationary satellite and then distributing signal using Wi-Fi, and you'll get the concept.

If, in fact, bandwidth increases by an order of magnitude (10 times) about every five years, LEO constellations might be among the few viable backhaul mechanisms able to supply that amount of new capacity, at low cost, in developing regions.

No Surprise: Study Finds Churn is Related to Device Customer Service

You likely would not be surprised to learn there is a link between customer churn and user experience with their devices, as well as a link between perceived poor customer or repair service.

A 2015 Ovum study found that poor customer experience around phone problems can increase churn when customers blame phone problems or poor repair service on the operator or retailer, according to Stas Wolk, Cellebrite VP.

According to the study, which surveyed 4,000 smartphone users across four countries, 14 percent of respondents said that they would look into purchasing their next handsets through different providers, based on their malfunction experience.

This number increased to 18 percent among customers who sought help for issues with decreasing software speed, Wolk says. And nearly 70 percent of smartphone users report having experienced device issues in the past year.  

Of those users who plan to switch providers following dissatisfaction with operators’ repair services, 25 percent cited customer service as a top three reason for churn.

Unreported problems can be an equally big problem, over time. When asked who they first turned to for help after discovering a smartphone problem, 28 percent of consumer respondents said they turned to no one and continued to use the phone as it was.

Some 33 percent of respondents, who encountered problems after the warranty on the device expired, reported they did not report the issues to their carrier.

The service provider, more than any other single contributor in the ecosystem, is going to take most of the direct impact of service activity related to use of the devices, whether that is “fair” or not.

A revamped customer service experience could capture those 14 percent  to 18 percent of customers at risk of switching to a different provider, while bolstering loyalty among the rest of an operator’s existing customer base.

Consumers prefer the convenience and immediate results of easy and effective self-serve solutions.

Of all possible repair channels, 79 percent of customer respondents said they would “definitely” or “likely” use a self-service solution to solve their smartphone malfunction woes. In comparison, 68 percent responded that they would likely resort to in-store service, and 67 percent would opt for online service.

Is 5G a Breakthrough in Combating "Dumb Pipe" Problem?

The “access” network traditionally has been--and remains--a way for users to get access to communication features provided by the core network. That feature of access networks does not change with the advent of fifth generation networks.

What might be quite new--if anticipated new applications are enabled as many believe--is that the 5G network will be the first access network whose value, features and business models are shaped and determined by the core networks in a new way.

For service providers concerned about “dumb pipe” and “low value commodity services,” 5G could be a breakthrough.

It is more than a breakthrough in mobile access network speeds that make mobile access a full substitute for fixed access, for the first time. Access speeds between a gigabit per second and 10 Gbps represent the biggest breakthrough in mobile access network capacity, ever.

That might not be the most-important change, though. Traditional core networks provided differentiated services for business customers. But 5G might be the first network to enable differentiated services for consumers, appliances and sensor networks.

In fact, it might be feasible to build custom networks--tuned or optimized for particular applications, using a single, unified network, not an overlay--at prices the end users and networks can afford to buy.

You might say the access network features become a richer part of the core network. That has potentially significant implications for the threat of “dumb network” status.

To be sure, access networks traditionally have been “dumb pipes” giving users connections to value provided by the core networks.

That will continue to be true for 5G and future network generations. What is new is the degree to which the access network will be recreated as a platform for differentiated services.

If regulators do not get in the way, that is a big deal.

Telecom Services are Digital Products, With "Digital" Economics

There it is, again: marginal cost pricing. “Carriers have already sunk a lot of expense into 4G LTE network upgrades (including purchasing spectrum licenses), and now the biggest portions of these costs have been paid,” argues Glenn Fleishman, Macworld senior contributor.

There is room for debate about about the financial truth of that notion.

Capital has been invested. The networks are built out and operating, and there are scores of millions of customers loaded onto those networks.

Whether the mobile carriers have yet recouped all of the invested capital might be a subject of some debate.

But it certainly is true that the cash spent to build out the networks is generating recurring service fee revenue. And, as Fleishman notes, “ their network infrastructures have been largely built out, and their current costs won’t increase much with additional customers or data usage.”

So what will service providers do to take customers from other providers? To the extent possible, they will price not at full “recovery of capital” levels, but on the incremental cost of serving the next customer.

Such marginal cost pricing happens in markets for digital products. And communication services are digital products, subject to all the economies any other digital application experiences.

So pricing will trend, over time, towards marginal cost. And what is the marginal cost of the next message, the next phone call, the next megabyte of usage? A number so small it is hard to measure. Or, as I call it, “near zero” pricing levels.

As always is the case, “price” and “cost” are different things! So the retail price might not actually reflect “cost” so closely. But the actual marginal cost of the next unit is quite literally “near zero.”

So something more than “mere competition” is at work here. The structural reality is that a digital product’s retail price trends towards zero.

That is the long-term structural reality of telecom service pricing.

Netflix Shuts Down Last Data Center

Content companies are prime candidates for cloud computing, and Netflix provides a good example.

Netflix is shutting down its last owned data center, making it a leader among large enterprises relying fully on public cloud computing.

Netflix has been 100 percent cloud-based for customer facing systems for some time.

About 12 percent of companies run information technology operations entirely in the cloud, according to a recent survey of 1,500 IT professionals by BetterCloud.

In five years almost 50% of our respondents said they will be moving their IT entirely to the cloud; in 10 years, that number will climb to nearly 70 percent.

Nearly all of those companies are small or medium-sized businesses. By 2022, just slightly more than 20 percent of large enterprise companies are expected to operate entirely in the cloud.

source: BetterCloud

Mobile Operators Looking at How to Monetize Wi-Fi

Where it comes to Wi-Fi networks, the revenue model always has been an issue. 



For most mobile operators, fixed telephone networks and cable TV operators, public hotspot Wi-Fi originally was an amenity, a useful feature for buyers of either mobile or fixed Internet access service. That has meant there was very little direct revenue. 



The upside came from better marketing platforms and lower churn rates. 



In-home Wi-Fi was a feature that made wiring chores to support in-home signal distribution easier and less costly. That arguably had operating cost and some capital cost savings, but did not directly create a clear revenue stream.



Also, Wi-Fi access for mobile and other devices has been a means of providing better signal coverage and access speed. Valuable, to be sure, but not a direct revenue contributor. 



More recently, Wi-Fi has been a means of offloading traffic from mobile to fixed networks, improving user experience, slowing the rate at which mobile network capacity upgrades were required, and boosting subscriber satisfaction by reducing the hit to mobile Internet usage buckets.



It remains to be seen whether mobile network ability to use Wi-Fi can be directly monetized, but it appears some mobile operators will try to do so.

New AT&T Mobile Value Share Plans Cut Cost per Gigabyte

AT&T is launching new Mobile Value Share plans Aug. 15, 2015 featuring bigger Internet data allotments. More notably, prices per GB are lower.

The changes to the Mobile Share Value plans include the elimination of the current one gigabyte plan for $25, 3 GB plan for $40 and 6 GB plan for $70. Under that pricing scheme, price per GB started at $25 and dropped to $12 per GB.

Replacing those plans are a 2 GB plan for $30 and a 5 GB plan for $50. Those plans have a device attachment cost of $25 a month. Under the new plans, price per GB starts at $15 and drops to about $7 per GB.

The new 15 GB plan costs $100 per month and the 20 GB plan costs $140 per month. Both plans also now include unlimited voice calling and text messaging from the U.S. to Mexico and Canada as well as the $15 charge per smartphone.

AT&T Value Share Plan Mobility Cost Per Gigabyte
Legacy cost	$25	40	70
Legacy plan data	1	3	6
$/GB	$25	$13	$12
New plan data	2	5	15	20
New plan cost	$30	$50	$100	$140
$/GB	$15	$10	$7	$7

“Tomorrow, we roll out new plans for everyone, including a plan that gives 50 percent more data than on our most popular plan,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Mobility.

Customers on a new 15GB plan or higher will also receive unlimited talk and text to Mexico and Canada.

Monthly Plan Charge	Data	Monthly Device Access Charge3	Unlimited Talk/Text to Mexico and Canada
$20	300MB	+$25/Line with AT&T Next
$30	2GB
$50	5GB
$100	15GB	+$15/Line with AT&T Next	included
$140	20GB