100 Million Gigabit Internet Access Connections in Service by 2020

At least 100 million people are expected to buy gigabit  services by 2020, predicts Point Topic CEO Oliver Johnson. Between 2016 and 2020, adoption will grow at a sizzling 65 percent compound annual growth rate.

Close to 70 percent of that overall growth is expected to come from the Asia Pacific region, Johnson argues. If so, most will come from countries in Asia, rather than the Pacific Islands, one might well argue.

In many cases, that headline speed will mean even-higher adoption of access at speeds in the 100s of megabits range. A reasonable forecast would have about half of U.S. high speed access  users buying 100 Mbps connections by about 2020.

source: Point Topic

source: Technology Futures

100 Million Gigabit Internet Access Connections in Service by 2020

At least 100 million people are expected to buy gigabit  services by 2020, predicts Point Topic CEO Oliver Johnson. Between 2016 and 2020, adoption will grow at a sizzling 65 percent compound annual growth rate.

Close to 70 percent of that overall growth is expected to come from the Asia Pacific region, Johnson argues. If so, most will come from countries in Asia, rather than the Pacific Islands, one might well argue.

In many cases, that headline speed will mean even-higher adoption of access at speeds in the 100s of megabits range. A reasonable forecast would have about half of U.S. high speed access  users buying 100 Mbps connections by about 2020.

source: Point Topic

source: Technology Futures

"More" is the Story in Latest Cisco Mobile Visual Networking Index

“More” always is the story every time Cisco issues another edition of its Visual Networking Index, including the mobile VNI. As a financial analyst might summarize each report, the “trend is up and to the right.”

Global mobile data traffic grew 74 percent in 2015, reaching 3.7 exabytes per month at the end of 2015, up from 2.1 exabytes per month at the end of 2014.

Mobile data traffic has grown 4,000-fold over the past 10 years and almost 400-million-fold over the past 15 years.

More "what" tends to be the new part of the story.

Fourth-generation (4G) traffic exceeded third-generation (3G) traffic for the first time in 2015.

Although 4G connections represented only 14 percent of mobile connections in 2015, they already account for 47 percent of mobile data traffic, while 3G connections represented 34 percent of mobile connections and 43 percent of the traffic.

In 2015, a 4G connection generated six times more traffic on average than a non‑4G connection. That has been the clear trend since people started using smartphones on 3G and 4G networks.

In 2015, on an average, a smart device generated 14 times more traffic than on basic devices.

Mobile offload also exceeded mobile network traffic for the first time in 2015. In other words, the fixed network now directly supports the majority of mobile device data usage.

Some 51 percent of total mobile data traffic was offloaded onto the fixed network through Wi-Fi or femtocell in 2015.

As now is the clear case, video traffic now drives data bandwidth consumption, accounting for 55 percent of total mobile data traffic in 2015. Mobile video traffic now accounts for more than half of all mobile data traffic.

The fundamental projections also are a story of “more.” Global mobile data traffic will increase nearly 800 percent between 2015 and 2020, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53 percent from 2015 to 2020.

Mobile network connection speeds will increase more than threefold by 2020. Where the average mobile network connection speed was 2 Mbps in 2015 average speeds will reach nearly 6.5 Mbps by 2020.

By 2020, 4G will represent nearly 41 percent of connections, but 72 percent of total traffic.

By 2020, a 4G connection will generate 3.3 times more traffic on average than a non-4G connection.

Globally, 67 percent of mobile devices will be smart devices by 2020, up from 36 percent in 2015.

The vast majority of mobile data traffic (98 percent) will originate from these smart devices by 2020, up from 89 percent in 2015. Also, 75 percent of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2020.

Mobile video will increase 11-fold between 2015 and 2020.

The average smartphone will generate 4.4 GB of traffic per month by 2020, nearly a fivefold increase over the 2015 average of 929 MB per month.

By 2020, aggregate smartphone traffic will be 8.8 times greater than it is today, with a CAGR of 54 percent.

The Middle East and Africa will have the strongest mobile data traffic growth of any region with a 71‑percent CAGR. This region will be followed by Asia Pacific at 54 percent and Central and Eastern Europe at 52 percent.

Global Mobile Devices (Excluding M2M) by 2G, 3G, and 4G

AT&T Launches Gigabit Service in Parts of Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Miami

AT&T has launched gigabit per second Internet access in parts of Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Miami.

In Chicago, service is available in Pingree Grove, Plano, Sugar Grove and surrounding communities In Dallas gigabit service is available in Cedar Hill, Colleyville, DeSoto, Joshua, Keene, Keller, Lakeside, Little Elm, Roanoke and surrounding communities.

In Atlanta service is available in Buford, Jonesboro, Lawrenceville, Norcross, Roswell, Sugar Hill, Suwanee and surrounding communities.

In Miami, the new service is sold in  Cooper City, Miami Lakes, Miramar, Pembroke Pines, Plantation and surrounding communities.

"Value" is Issue for Viable Service Provider Martketplaces

App stores have become a major and increasingly-important channel for consumer and some enterprise apps. A related approach is the inclusion of third-party apps as part of cloud -based services such as CenturyLink’s Marketplace Provider Program or the IBM Cloud Marketplace

For example, Clusterpoint, a database vendor providing Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) for enterprises and application developers, today announced its certification under the CenturyLink Cloud Marketplace Provider Program. This integration allows customers of the CenturyLink Cloud platform to launch the Clusterpoint 4.0 Computing Engine directly from the CenturyLink Cloud Knowledge Base.

Still, collaboration between app providers and service providers remains non-intuitive or easy.

Value is among the difficulties. Successful marketplaces arguably offer clear value for enterprises or consumer buyers, the app providers and service providers that benefit from greater customer retention and upsell opportunities.

But it often is difficult to identify the clear upside for each partner, and how much value buyers will perceive.

The upshot is that t is not often totally obvious how that alignment can be created. For starters, the way apps now are developed often means that no “permission” is required for any buyer to get access to any Internet app.

To the extent there is a viable and proven revenue model, it is the 70-30 revenue split between developers and app store owners, for popular app stores.

A half decade ago it might have seemed possible to create mobile service provider app stores, but that has proven unworkable, as the popular app stores are directly controlled either by device suppliers or in some cases operating system suppliers such as Google.  

And that remains one of the key questions about collaboration between app providers, device providers and service providers. In principle, getting approved for any major app store solves the “distribution” problem, if not the “popularity” problem.

What always is tougher are ways for app and service providers, specifically, to collaborate in ways that are mutually beneficial. In a somewhat more limited way, a cloud provider’s partner programs are modeled on the app store model, and provide the same sorts of benefits.

For service providers, the issue is rather important. Over time, unless some obvious and integral role in the apps ecosystem is created, access providers will be “dumb pipes” in a commodity business.

Back to the Future for AT&T Technology Development?

The “telecom” business has gotten tougher over the last couple of decades, in ways large and small.

The big things have to do with maturation and now decline of the legacy revenue sources; new competitors with different business models and lower cost structure; and a fundamental shift in the way applications and services get created.

In voice services, even firms that had been growing now are shrinking. Comcast’s voice revenues, for example, shrank in the most recent year, even as it added more accounts, suggesting that Comcast is merchandising its voice services to protect revenue and margins for other products.  

A decline in voice revenue, in fact, is a global trend.

The same trend actually can be seen for fixed networks supplying high speed access, which will decline, over time, in favor of mobile Internet access.

One small change is AT&T’s way of adapting to supplier risk, especially the risk that a key supplier might go out of business.

When working with key small suppliers, AT&T now “expects to increase the depth of understanding of our core technologies held by our staff to the point that they can integrate, and even design the systems from scratch,” AT&T says. “AT&T expects to develop key software resources in a way that they can be openly used, and cannot be lost through the acquisition or insolvency of a vendor partner.”

The AT&T system used to develop its own technology (Bell Laboratories and Western Union). That began to change with the AT&T breakup in 1984, and today the tier one providers source their core technology from third-party suppliers.

That might change in the future, as virtualized networks are developed, running on common and commodity hardware, using more open approaches, and with a core commitment to develop strategic systems in a way that allows AT&T to survive even the bankruptcy of any key suppliers.

So we might see something of a shift back towards service provider knowledge of, creation of, and maintenance of, core technology services and systems.

We haven’t seen that since before 1984. To make that work, service providers must have the ability to develop core technology themselves. For some of us, that harkens back to an older time.

Broadband : fixed and mobile Percent market shares ¹
Date	Fixed (wired) broadband		Active mobile broadband
	Actual %	Forecast %	Actual %	Forecast %
2005	100	100
2006	100	100
2007	56.4	54.2	43.6	45.8
2008	49.3	49.6	50.7	50.4
2009	43.2	44.6	56.8	55.4
2010	40.4	39.4	59.6	60.6
2011	33.7	34.2	66.3	65.8
2012	29.1	29.2	70.9	70.8
2013	24.9	24.8	75.1	75.2
2014		20.9		79.1
2015		17.8		82.2
2016		15.4		84.6
2017		13.5		86.5
2018		12.1		87.9
2019		11.1		88.9
2020		10.4		89.6
Annual average growth rate	-12.7%	-11.9%	9.5%	5.3%
source: ITU

source: Telecompetitor

Comcast Rolling Out Gigabit Service Commercially in 5 Metros in 2016

Comcast plans to introduce the world’s first DOCSIS 3.1-powered gigabit Internet service to residential and business customers in Atlanta and Nashville in early 2016, with Chicago, Detroit, and Miami to follow in the second half of the year.

Keep in mind that the Concast deployments are "whole city" deployments, not "neighborhoods." Every location will get gigabit capability, not just locations in selected neighborhoods.

The new technology will, for the first time, make it possible for Xfinity and Comcast Business Internet customers to receive gigabit speeds over existing hybrid fiber coax networks already installed to support current service, and will not require a fiber upgrade.

Last year, Comcast launched its residential fiber-based multi-gigabit service--Gigabit Pro--in metropolitan Atlanta, making it the first market to receive the company’s 2-gigabit symmetrical service.

Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Nashville, and several other markets were added over the following months, and Gigabit Pro is now available to 18 million homes across Comcast’s national footprint.

Gigabit Pro does require installation of a direct to location fiber connection, unlike DOCSIS 3.1.

Comcast also has increased Internet speeds for residential customers 16 times in the last 14 years, at rates equivalent to Moore’s Law, Comcast has said.