India Mobile Market Share Rearranged with Reliance Communications-Aircel Merger

The consolidation of India’s mobile market has taken a big step as Reliance Communications and Aircel are merging their businesses.

The combined entity will have 187.64 million subscribers, creating a new number-three mobile business behind Bharti Airtel Ltd (255.7 million) and Vodafone India Ltd (199.4 million). Until the merger, Idea had been the number-three provider.

The merger vaults the new company into the “top-four” ranks, creating significant separation between the fifth and all other smaller providers.

Nobody yet knows what further changes will occur as Reliance Jio enters the market, either.

source: Telecom Lead

Can Regulators Boost Internet Access Speeds by Enabling Cable TV Competition?

source: Ofcom

With the caveat that there are many institutional and historical processes at work, one supply-side policy communications regulators can implement--or should have implemented--is legalizing and aggressively supporting deployment of cable TV networks.

That appears to lead not only to more competition in a market, but also seems to lead to higher overall Internet access speeds.

Likewise, one demand-side development that has helped spur speed upgrades, as well as deployment footprint, is the triple-play bundle pioneered by cable TV companies.

Such are the conclusions one might draw from recent Internet speed tests in the United Kingdom, where Virgin Media, if not ubiquitous, passes about 44 percent of U.K. homes.

One data point: a recent speed test shows Virgin Media providing the fastest downstream speeds, compared to Internet service providers using the BT wholesale network.

In those tests, Virgin Media speeds in the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. portion of the day were 79 percent faster than BT’s speeds in the same time period, using one test methodology.

In another test, Virgin Media was more than twice as fast as BT in the 7 a.m. time period.

In the 6 p.m. to 3 p.m. period, Virgin Media was either 46 percent faster or twice as fast, depending on test method.

Peak and Off-Peak Download Speed Tests Results September 2016
Provider	tbbx1 Test (1 download)			httpx6 Test (6 downloads)
	7am-3pm	6pm-midnight	% difference	7am-3pm	6pm-midnight	% difference
BT	24.8 Mbps	23.9 Mbps	-3.8%	21.8 Mbps	21.2 Mbps	-2.8%
EE	14.2 Mbps	13.2 Mbps	-7.6%	14.4 Mbps	13.6 Mbps	-5.9%
Plusnet	23 Mbps	21.6 Mbps	-6.5%	18.7 Mbps	18.5 Mbps	-1.1%
Sky	15.3 Mbps	14 Mbps	-9.3%	13.9 Mbps	12.5 Mbps	-11.2%
TalkTalk	14.7 Mbps	13.1 Mbps	-12.2%	13.8 Mbps	13.3 Mbps	-3.8%
Virgin Media	44.6 Mbps	34.9 Mbps	-27.8%	52.6 Mbps	44.5 Mbps	-18.2%

source: Think Broadband

Software Will be Biggest Revenue Driver in 2030 Autonomous Vehicle Ecosystem

Software will be the biggest autonomous vehicle value chain winner, with $25 billion in revenues in 2030, a 28 percent compound annual growth rate, according to Lux Research. By that point it is possible autonomous vehicle ecosystem revenues could reach $87 billion.

Optical cameras and radar sensors will amount to $8.7 billion and $5.9 billion opportunities in 2020, respectively. By perhaps  2030 computers will be biggest hardware opportunity on-board autonomous cars, amounting to a $13 billion opportunity.

Ironically, some industries will be severely disrupted. Uber drivers, for example, will be replaced by autonomous vehicles. Auto sales should decline, as more people forego car ownership.

And insurance sales volume could drop as much as 80 percent, according to KPMG and Deloitte.  

source: Lux Research

source: Business Insider

DSRC or 5G?

It is not yet clear whether autonomous car communications (vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure) will use 5G networks or dedicated short range communications (DSRC).

Indeed, it is likely some applications will make more sense for one or other other of the two methods, while yet other connection platforms also are used, as well.

But it is clear that the stakes are quite high for mobile operators, as revenue growth premised on ever-growing subscriptions for mobile data, plus rising recurring payment streams, are close to saturated in some markets.

That means the industry already is searching for the next big driver of incremental revenues.

source: Business Intelligence

source: Visteon Electronics

According to analysts at Deloitte, we already are at the peak of the smartphone era. In fact, 2016 “will likely mark the end of the smartphone growth era, and the start of its consolidation,” Deloitte argues. “A mere nine years after the launch of the first full touchscreen smartphone, adoption is nearing a plateau, at 81 per cent of UK adults, and 91 per cent of 18–44 year olds.”

NCTA Kills its National Convention (Name Change Notwithstanding)

As someone who has spent about 30 years in and around telecom and cable TV industry events and media, I can attest that when events come and go, or media come and go, it tells you something about change in the industry.

For 65 years, U.S. cable TV executives have met annually at an event formerly known colloquially as “the national show.” That event in recent years was renamed INTX. But INTX now is going away, cancelled by the NCTA.

“We believe large trade show floors, dotted with exhibit booths and stilted schedules have become an anachronism,” said NCTA CEO Michael Powell.

Contemporary venues emphasize conversation, dialog, and more intimate opportunities to explore and interact with technology,” said Powell.

Left unsaid was that, over the past decade or two, it had become less important for buyers or sellers to be there. There simply were fewer buyers, so sellers could work with them directly. And anything of any importance already was known before any particular edition of a trade show. There was, in the colloquial, increasingly no news of any consequence.

Also, with the maturation of the business model, a convention once driven by programmers had become a venue mostly driven by technology firms. But there are other venues for technology.

Also, at a time when every part of the telecom business has become more competitive, and every segment is trying to wring costs out of its business, executives had to question whether the outcomes from spending money to attend that annual event were producing outcomes commensurate with investment.

At the same time, though it continues to use a technology platform that is specialized and distinct, cable TV operators now are part of the broader communications business. And there are lots of venues for that industry, nationally and globally.

As the global industry continues to consolidate, other segments of the industry are going to rationalize as well.

Effort, time and money spent “intra-industry” are less important than investments inter-industry, given the loosely-coupled nature of the communications ecosystem, which in turn has become part of the broader Internet ecosystem.

It has been a good 65-year run. But too many things have changed.

Korea Telecom Sees New Value from Fixed Network

Korea Telecom, like Verizon, now sees different strategic value for the fixed network. AT&T likely agrees, up to a point.

The stated upside for Korea Telecom fixed transport network capacity upgrades is said to be “home video, mobile broadband, and VIP leased lines.”

Consumer video includes support for bandwidth-intensive 4K video formats, but telco upgrades to fiber-to-home or fiber-to-node long have been premised on incremental video entertainment revenues. That is not especially new.

Nor would anyone find trunking network support for business and enterprise customers too surprising.

What is different is the use of the fixed network as backhaul for mobile broadband. Again, while mobile backhaul always has been key revenue driver for cell tower connections, coming small cell requirements represent a qualitative change.

It is one thing to support networks of macrocells. That fiber-to-tower market has been important for many service providers for some years.

Up to this point, in the U.S. market, there has been a need for backhaul to perhaps 300,000 macro cell sites in the United States and 200,000 towers. All that will change with new small cell overlay networks to support capacity upgrades for 4G and 5G networks.

Ignore for the moment potentially millions of enterprise small cells. Public networks in urban areas might be built out more extensively than anything seen before.

If in some urban areas the density is roughly “fiber to every other light pole,” That implies potentially millions of new backhaul sites to be supported.

That in turn will require dense fiber backhaul networks. So the new strategic value of the fixed network will extend beyond consumer video/broadband and enterprise/business connections to mobile small cell backhaul.

The additional incremental change is backhaul for fixed wireless small cells.

Cord Stackers More Satisfied Than Cord Cutters (No Surprise)

Almost by definition, consumers who like a product will buy more of it than consumers who do not like a particular product. So it is with entertainment video.

Overall satisfaction with paid streaming video service is highest among cord stackers who buy both linear and over the top video, and lowest among cord cutters, who, by definition, have abandoned linear video.

The latest J.D. Power study finds that although the number of customers who cut the cord on pay TV is growing, the majority of streaming video customers still purchase a linear TV service in addition to a streaming video service.

About 60 percent of streaming customers are cord stackers; 23 percent are cord shavers (those who still subscribe to TV but have downgraded their service package); 13 percent are cord cutters (those who have recently canceled TV service); and four percent are cord nevers (those who have never subscribed to pay TV and only subscribe to streaming video service).

Overall satisfaction is lowest among cord cutters, followed closely by cord nevers, while satisfaction is highest among cord stackers and cord shavers.