Why Spectrum Sharing Matters

A new white paper on What is Spectrum Sharing and Why Does it Matter? is posted on the Spectrum Futures blog. 

Spectrum sharing matters because communications spectrum is a scarce asset, and demand is growing very fast, both because billions of new Internet access users will come online, and because new Internet apps and devices consume vastly more bandwidth.

Spectrum sharing martters, in large markets, because there is, for example, almost no uncommitted communications spectrum available in the sub-2-GHz range.

Though there is an expectation that much spectrum in millimeter bands (3 GHz to 300 GHz) can be allocated for communications purposes, most of that spectrum will be severely “short range,” and hence best suited for indoor or small cell applications.

Global mobile data traffic grew 69 percent in 2014, and each succeeding mobile generation seems to grow consumption by an order of magnitude, according to Cisco estimates. Long Term Evolution (4G) devices consume an order of magnitude more data than a non-LTE device, for example.

Any smartphone tends to lead to consumption of 37 times the data of a feature phone, according to Cisco. And smartphones are becoming the standard global device. Where today 28 percent of customers use smartphones, that will grow to perhaps 52 percentby 2018.

Use of Internet access plans might reach 84 percent by 2020, according to Ericsson.

In other words, smartphones will be as common as toothbrushes.

To be sure, spectrum sharing also introduces a new element of business model uncertainty, because spectrum sharing can replace a large measure of scarcity with a large measure of abundance.

Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos Company) Makes First-Ever Landing of a Reusable Rocket Booster

Blue Origin, a company owned by Jeff Bezos, has successfully, for the very first time, managed to land a rocket booster.

Once repeatable, that reuse of boosters could dramatically slice the cost of launching payloads. Some think a reduction to about 20 percent of today's launch cost is possible.

 

Mobile Money is Among Key Telco Innovation Successes

Some telco efforts to enter new markets succeed, while others fail.

Mobile money businesses appear to be a clear example of the former, while over the top voice and messaging services appear to be an example of the latter.

At least so far, there is optimism about Internet of Things initiatives. It is unclear whether cloud computing might become an example of the latter, as well.

Mobile success in banking-related services might come as a bit of a surprise, even if “financial inclusion” is a major problem.

As of 2014, 40 percent of the global adult population did not have any kind of formal financial account, bank based or otherwise, and as such were considered financially excluded, according to GSMA.

Emerging markets led the growth of global non-cash transactions between 2009 and 2013. The volume of non-cash transactions grew 13 percent compared to mature markets at six percent, driven by emerging markets in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, which saw growth rates of 20 percent per year.

As of June 2015 there were 255 live mobile money services around the world, with a further 102 services planned, according to GSMA.

More than half of the live services are in Sub-Saharan Africa, where mobile money has become a popular service not only for fund transfers but also for other transactions such as airtime top-ups and bill payments.

There are 300 million mobile money accounts globally and 2.3 million agent outlets extending mobile money services to customers who do not have access to a bank branch network, GSMA notes.

There also are more than 100 million active mobile money accounts in service. Some 21 services have more than one million active accounts, and in 16 countries the number of mobile money accounts is greater than the number of bank accounts.

source: GSMA

source: GSMA

High Consumer and Supplier Taxes Affect Mobile Adoption

Direct taxes on consumers for using mobile services. Taxes and fees likewise represent a huge percentage of operating costs for many mobile service providers.

In Pakistan, taxes represent 32 percent of the total cost of consumer mobile ownership and 33 percent of the cost to consumers of using mobile services.

In India, consumer taxes represent 23 percent of the total consumer cost of mobile ownership and 23 percent of the cost of using mobile services, according to the GSMA.

In India, “total outflow to the government in the form of all fees (spectrum, license, upfront, deferred) is an astounding between 25 percent to 35 percent every year,” says Parag Kar, Qualcomm VP, government affairs, India and South Asia, quantifying the impact of operator-specific fees. “This will impact operator’s ability to invest in networks and electronics.”

source: GSMA

In Emerging Markets, Mobile IS Internet Access, Says GSMA

With low fixed network Internet access availability in most emerging markets, mobile is increasingly becoming the key method for Internet access, the GSMA reports.

Coverage levels of 3G and 4G networks in emerging markets are expected to increase to 84 percent and 65 percent of the population respectively by 2020.

Given the increased availability of high-speed internet and the growing supply of sub-$50 smartphones, smartphone adoption will increase significantly to 2020, to account for 60 percent of total connections or more than 4.5 billion connections.By 2020, mobile Internet access will reach 100 percent in East Asia, 106 percent in South America and 131 percent in Central and Eastern Europe.

By 2020, mobile Internet access will have climbed from the 2014 level of 24 percent in the Middle East and North Africa to 71 percent. In Sub-Saharan Africa mobile Internet access will grow from 13 percent to 53 percent.

In South Asia, mobile Internet access will rise from seven percent to 41 percent, growth of nearly 600 percent.

source: GSMA

The growth of mobile Internet access will be propelled, in substantial part, by huge increases in use of smartphones.

source: GSMA

Have Some Telcos Lost Battle for Relevancy in Cloud Computing?

U.S. incumbent telcos rationally thought operation of data centers would be a natural fit for their high capacity transport services. That arguably remains the case in other markets. The U.S. market, though, is home to the likes of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure, Google and IBM cloud computing efforts.

In other words, telcos face unusually visible and formidable competitors with leading mindshare and scale.   

For telcos building cloud computing businesses, several major challenges have emerged, says David W Wang, a business development consultant based in Washington DC and author of the new book “Cash in on Cloud Computing.”

Melding acquired assets is one issue. Though Wang says “lack of strategic vision” is an obstacle, the more likely problem is integration of various acquired cloud assets to create seamless national offers, and change the value proposition.

Alignment of sales and marketing efforts also have been problematic, he says. “Unfortunately neither the legacy telco sales nor newly joined cloud sales seem to be ready to cross-sell the new services,” says Wang.

Customer resistance arguably is a bigger problem. Buyers are accustomed to buying transport from one set of suppliers, while information technology services are sold by a different set of suppliers.

To the extent that sales forces try and sell the new products, they necessarily must sell to the IT decision makers, who might be different from the connectivity decisions makers.

Even when the right decision makers are reached, IT buyers have tended to discount telco cloud offers, Wang argues.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is simply the domain competence and scale of the acknowledged cloud computing leaders such as AWS.

“The AWS brand is becoming too strong for public instant cloud applications and storage for the telcos to compete with,” says Wang.

That reality arguably is at variance with past expectations, when telco brands might have been deemed bigger players in the cloud services market.

Simply put, none of the brands currently bought or considered most frequently are “telco” brands.

source: STL Partners

source: Rightscale

Mobile Ecosystem Value and Revenue is Shifting to App Providers

Most of the revenue growth in the U.S. mobile ecosystem arguably is going to application providers, one might argue after reviewing estimates made by Chetan Sharma. Voice service revenue was down between 2013 and 2014. Access revenue (mostly mobile data) grew significantly. But total mobile service provider revenues did not grow as much as app provider revenues.