Ting Will Face Big Test in Denver, Colo. Suburb

Ting will face an important test of its abiliity to compete against the tier-one providers when it lights a gigabit network in Centennial, Colo., where both CenturyLink and Comcast already offer, or soon will offer, their own gigabit services.

It might be one thing to offer gigabit services in a smaller community where it will not have to face a tier-one provider. It will be something else again to compete against two tier-one providers, each of which already is committing to offer gigabit services.

That will be the case in Centennial, a suburban community in the southern part of the Denver metropolitan area. For that reason, it is a crucial test, not only for Ting, but all other independent gigabit providers.

AT&T DirecTV Now Launch Will Include Zero Rated Bandwidth on the Mobile Network

In the fourth quarter of 2016, AT&T will launch DirecTV Now , an over the top video entertainment product with a heavy mobile or untethered focus, featuring “100-plus premium channels.”

There are a couple angles here. Consider the way AT&T plans to manage bandwidth consumption and pricing, something that, in the mobile realm, has been a challenging barrier.

“And when you buy this content, the data required to stream it on your mobile device is incorporated into the price of the content,” said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson at an investor conference.

“If you choose to use that in a mobile environment on AT&T your data cost associated with this is incorporated into your content cost,” he said.

There is a precedent for this: broadcast TV, broadcast radio, Sirius XM and cable TV and other linear video services. Or, if you like additional examples, newspapers and magazines that consumers can subscribe to, with delivery cost simply bundled into the price of the subscription.

Media products, in other words, always have featured incorporation of delivery cost into the purchased product price.

Zero rating of delivery cost (no incremental charge, in the above examples), is simply a common media and content product pricing model. Though some insist on casting zero rating as an infraction of network neutrality, it is simply an accepted model for media products.

As some have argued, video entertainment services can be viewed as “managed services,” not “Internet” apps. By definition, managed services are not subject to network neutrality rules.

The other angle is that in zero rating video entertainment, AT&T shows its belief that its mobile network can handle the huge increase in consumed bandwidth. And if the mobile network can handle entertainment video, it can handle all the other conceivable media types.

If the mobile network can handle all the media types, and former bandwidth restrictions are not impediments, then mobile increasingly will be a viable substitute for the fixed network.

AT&T Believes Default Future Architecture is Wireless

Just in case you were wondering whether tier-one service providers such as Verizon and AT&T actually believe they can use fixed wireless and mobile services to compete directly with fixed networks--including optical fiber directly to the premises--consider what AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson recently said at an investor conference.

“Our default or target network architecture in the long run is wireless,” he said. “We think that's where we need to be.”

But what about fiber to the premises? “ Obviously fiber is going to be important for several years,” Stephenson said. Of course that will be the case, in enterprise, backhaul and wholesale settings in particular.

But that is not the key point. AT&T might be wrong, but it actually believes wireless will do the job.

“But as we look out in a world of 5G our target architecture is a wireless architecture,” he said.

Fortune 500 CEOs are a sober lot, not given to flippant remarks when speaking in investor forums. So that is a significant statement.

So that little tidbit is instructive. It will bother some in the ecosystem. Many will doubt the shift to wireless is going to be easy, or even possible. But many of us would not bet against the premise.

There simply is too much development effort, too much new technology, too much new spectrum coming and too clear a need for lower infrastructure and operating costs, for that shift to wireless not to be attempted.

Comcast Might Get 12 Million Mobile Accounts in First Few Years

In the early going, Comcast is likely to snag about three percent market share, or about 12 million accounts. That is based on Comcast getting about 10 percent mobile market share in the areas where it actually operates its fixed networks.

Eventually, Comcast theoretically could get 20 percent share of the whole market, but likely not unless it acquires either T-Mobile US or Sprint.

So here’s the thinking.

In the first quarter of 2016, the leading U.S. mobile providers had about 393 million branded mobile accounts in service, with Verizon having 138 million, AT&T 130.4 million, T-Mobile US 65.5 million and Sprint 58.8 million.

For the sake of argument, if Comcast were to grab about 10 percent share in the first few years, that would represent about 39 million accounts.

Eventually, if Comcast gets 20 percent share, that implies something on the order of 79 million accounts.

There are many contingencies. Comcast says it will first concentrate on selling services to its own customer base. Since Comcast networks pass only about 30 percent of U.S. homes, that essentially limits the addressable market to some fraction of the total U.S.mobile market.

So if Comcast gets 10 percent of mobile customers in its own areas, that might equate to some 12 million accounts. To get to 20 percent share of the whole U.S. market, Comcast almost certainly would have to acquire either Sprint or T-Mobile US.

There are, of course, many unknowns. Some believe it is inevitable that Comcast buys T-Mobile US. Some new entity, with marketing muscle and assets, could enter the market and buy Sprint or T-Mobile US.

Dish Network somehow could find a partner to help it build and operate its own network, complicating the market share possibilities even further.

Some believe Sprint and T-Mobile US will try to merge, again.

You can make your own guesses about which competing mobile service providers will be hurt the most, as Comcast enters the market.

In the second quarter of 2016 Verizon had 35 percent share. AT&T had about 32.5 percent share. T-Mobile US had about 16 percent share, while Sprint had about 15 percent share. All other mobile suppliers collectively had about two percent share.

If Comcast were to take share equally, from all the four leading providers, Verizon would lose the most customers. Few likely believe that will be the case. Assuming Comcast enters the market with a low price positioning, it is likely to compete more with Sprint and T-Mobile US.

AT&T, by virtue of its subscriber mass, and its relatively greater loss of subscribers to T-Mobile US, might also be affected more than Verizon.

U.S. Mobile Operator Subs, Q2 2016 (retail and wholesale)
Carrier	Subscribers (millions)	Net Adds (millions)	Service Revenue (US$ millions)
Verizon Wireless	142.754	1.285	$16,741
AT&T	131.805	1.361	$14,912
T-Mobile USA	67.384	1.881	$6,888
Sprint	58.446	-0.360	$5,943

source: Jackdaw Research

Messaging Apps Now are Platforms

Source: BI Intelligence

Messaging apps now are platforms, meaning they now are proving to be the foundation for creating apps and services on top of them.

Messaging apps now are ways for people to connect with brands, browse merchandise, and watch content, for example.

The combined user base of the top messaging apps is larger than the combined user base of the top four social networks, according to Business Insider.  

WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and Viber are biggest. But WeChat, KakaoTalk, and LINE arguably have done the best job monetizing their customer bases. 

Chat apps also have higher retention and usage rates than most mobile apps. Also, the majority of their users are young, an extremely important demographic for brands, advertisers and publishers.

Enterprise Employees Downloaded Malware Every 4 Seconds in 2015, Study Finds

source: Check Point

Unknown malware increased nine times while employees downloaded a new unknown malware every four seconds in 2015, according to the Check Point Security Report and SANS 2016 Threat Landscape Study.

In total, there were nearly 12 million new malware variants discovered every month, with more new malware discovered in the past two years than the previous decade, Check Point said.

About 20 percent of employees will inadvertently introduce malware through the mobile or Wi-Fi networks.

Endpoints represent the starting points for most threats, with attackers leveraging email in 75 percent of cases.

Also, 39 percent of endpoint attacks bypassed the network gateway firewalls.

As smartphones and tablets account for 60 percent of digital media time spent, mobile devices now are the way a substantial number of breaches occur.

Comcast is Going to Rearrange U.S. Mobile Operator Market Share

As competitive as the U.S. mobile market is, it is going to get worse. Comcast will be getting into the mobile business in 2017, using a “Wi-Fi-first” approach.

Speaking at an investor conference, CEO Brian Roberts said that by mid-2017 Comcast will launch a mobile service using Verizon wholesale services and Comcast’s own network of 15 million public Wi-Fi hotspots.

The only issue is which of the four biggest U.S. mobile firms will be hurt the most. Based only on share changes T-Mobile US has reported, AT&T and Sprint are probably the most exposed.

T-Mobile US says it has added--so far in the quarter--about 753,000 net new branded postpaid phone accounts and 650,000 prepaid net customer accounts in the third quarter 2016. At that rate, T-Mobile US will show growth for the quarter, year over year.

Adding some color, T-Mobile US says it gained more than 250,000 accounts from Verizon Wireless.

T-Mobile US gained about 400,000 accounts from AT&T and nearly 300,000 from Sprint.

If Comcast enters the market with a price-lead strategy--and most believe that is precisely what it will do--Comcast should pose the same “value-price” challenge T-Mobile US already does.

Comcast says it will concentrate first on selling mobile services to its own customers, essentially expanding its triple-play bundle to a quadruple-play bundle.

If Comcast enters the market with a price-lead strategy--and most believe that is precisely what it will do--Comcast should pose the same “value-price” challenge T-Mobile US already does.

In the first quarter of 2016, there were about 393 million mobile accounts in service, with Verizon having 138 million, AT&T 130.4 million, T-Mobile US 65.5 million and Sprint 58.8 million.

For the sake of argument, if Comcast were to grab about 10 percent share in the first couple of years, that would represent about 39 million accounts. Eventually, if Comcast gets 20 percent share, that implies something on the order of 79 million accounts.

You can make your own guesses about which competing mobile service providers will be hurt the most. But in the second quarter of 2016 Verizon had 35 percent share. AT&T had about 32.5 percent share. T-Mobile US had about 16 percent share, while Sprint had about 15 percent share. All other mobile suppliers collectively had about two percent share.

So Comcast initially will spend some time as provider number five. Eventually, Comcast could surpass T-Mobile US and Sprint.