Internet Access: Moore's Law Not Fast Enough for You?

Author Samuel Clemens once quipped that there are “Lies, damn lies and statistics.” Psychologists know a Rashomon” effect exists, where people have distinctly different impressions of the same event.

So it always seems to be with understanding of how much progress any nation or service provider is making in the area of Internet service quality.

Improvements nearly at Moore's Law rates seems to be a “problem.”

The Federal Communications Commission takes one view; some take the other.

“Broadband deployment in the United States--especially in rural areas--is failing to keep pace with today’s advanced, high-quality voice, data, graphics and video offerings, according to the 2015 Broadband Progress Report adopted today by the Federal Communications Commission,” the FCC says.

The FCC observation about rural areas is correct, and likely always will be, for many of the reasons that hipster bars and restaurants never will be as plentiful in rural areas as they are in urban areas.

Density is required for some businesses to exist, or be sustainable.

The FCC notes that “55 million Americans--17 percent of the population--lack access to advanced broadband,” defined as 25 Mbps in the downstream and 3 Mbps in the upstream.

At the same time, firms such as Comcast, Google Fiber, AT&T, CenturyLink and many others are actively deploying gigabit access networks, where demand will sustain those services.

More important, Comcast and AT&T continue to demonstrate they can scale Internet access bandwidth nearly at Moore’s Law rates.

To the extent the FCC sees itself--and to the extent that it is--the protector of citizen and consumer rights, it is understandable that the agency can say we are not making enough progress.

But that does not mean we are not making progress. We clearly are, unless you think Moore’s Law rates of improvement are not fast enough.

The other observation is that, to a large extent, we will never experience, in rural areas, the same amenities we see in urban areas.

In that sense, “lack of progress” will always  be a problem. That does not mean we are not “solving” the problem, generally.

Nine Years Since the iPhone Introduction

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone nine years ago, on Dec. 9, 2007. It might not have immediately changed the world, but it set in motion a huge change in the way mobile devices are developed and commercialized, loosening mobile service provider control.

Some of us would argue the iPhone was the first device to capture end user imagination in a matter similar to the way people have emotional identifications with their clothing, perfumes, autos, shoes, favorite vacation destinations or sports teams.

In other words, for the first time, there was a physical product that embodied the value of "bandwidth" or "network access."

Intangible services (legal or financial services, for example) are hard to market, since the buyer has no tangible way to judge the quality of the product until after the product has been purchased and consumed.

Internet access and voice service, for example, are intangible. The iPhone was a breakthrough. It personified the value of mobile data access. We already knew the value of a "mobile phone" for voice or messaging. But iPhone personified the value of mobile Internet access.

1.66 Million Employed in App Industry; Perhaps 2.6 Million in Telecom Service Provider Industry

The U.S. app industry represents 1.66 million as of December 2015, according to the Progressive Policy Institute.

PPI includes among the firms employing those people large and small app developers; software and media companies; financial and retail companies; industrial companies; health and education enterprises; leading tech companies such as Google, Apple, and Facebook; nonprofits and government suppliers; and large accounting and consulting firms.

Such employees have direct information technology jobs, non-IT jobs that support those jobs, or spillover local retail and restaurant jobs, construction jobs, and all the other necessary services.

Core app economy workers number about 550,000.

By way of comparison, there were an estimated 910,000 people directly employed in the core telecom industry in 2010, according to US Telecom.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were in December 2015 some 868,000 core service provider jobs. Using the same ratio of indirect jobs to direct jobs as for the app economy analysis, there might be 2.6 million people employed by the core telecommunications services industry.

                                    Estimates of App Economy Jobs

Date of estimate	Date of publication	App Economy jobs, thousands
Fall 2011	Feb. 2012	466
April 2012	October 2012	519
June 2013	July 2013	752
Dec. 2015         January 2016		1660
Data: South Mountain Economics, Progressive Policy Institute, The Conference Board, Indeed, BLS

Cloud Computing Services Sales $47 Billion for 12 Months Ending in September 2015

Cloud computing infrastructure spending was about $60 billion for the 12 months ending in September 2015, according to Synergy Research Group, growing 28 percent annually.

About $47 billion was earned by sales of various cloud services.

Service revenues included $20 billion for cloud infrastructure services (IaaS, PaaS, private and hybrid services) and $27 billion from software as a service.

Public infrastructure as a service and platform as a service had the highest growth rate at 51 percent, followed by private and hybrid cloud infrastructure services at 45 percent.

Private cloud spending grew 16 percent.

source: Synergy Research

2016 Year the Phone Number Disappears?

With 800 million people using Facebook’s Messenger app every month, it is understandable that

David Marcus, Facebook VP of Messaging Products, would say that 2016 is the year we see “the disappearance of the phone number.”

Many of you have been hearing such predictions for a decade or two, so will not pay too much attention. It is not that use of Messenger and other social messaging apps will stall. Indeed, it seems certain usage will grow.

But there simply is too much necessity for phone numbers, globally, for other reasons. Many of you know all the reasons why people do not rely on “phone numbers” to dial or reach people.

Underneath, in the network, there is little way to avoid such conventions.

75% of Cars Sold in 2020 Will Be Connected Car Capable

By 2020, 75 percent of cars shipped globally will be built with the necessary hardware to allow people to stream music, look up movie times, be alerted of traffic and weather conditions, and even power driving-assistance services such as self-parking. according to Business Insider Intelligence.

The connected-car market is growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, about 10 times as fast as the overall car market.

Of the 220 million total connected cars on the road globally in 2020, connected services will be activated in 88 million of those vehicles.

Business Insider

Ration or Use Prices: There is No Other Way to Manage Use of Network Resources

All the arguments about network usage aside, “networks are finite resources, and there are only two possible ways of allocating those resources,” says analyst and consultant Martin Geddes.

Either there is a market for a “quantity or quality” and the price mechanism decides who really values it, or here is rationing of resources by some decision process imposed on users.

“There is no third option: pick one of the above,” Geddes says.

In other words, we have the choice of using a price mechanism, or rationing. Geddes argues that all T-Mobile US customers essentially win when Binge On is enabled, because overall network load is reduced.

Some prefer rationing, even if that is not what they claim is the case. Others prefer price mechanisms. Congestion is actually a form of rationing. So is Binge On.

Some argue use of price mechanisms would work better, in part because a price mechanism allows buyers to decide how much they want to pay for, and encourages them to consider alternate ways of satisfying their bandwidth demand.

That is why Wi-Fi offload works. People choose to use it, instead of staying on the mobile network, because there are actual or potential cost savings.