All Internet of Things Forecasts Slope Up and to the Right

It is impossible to find any Internet of Things forecasts, for any segment of the market, that fail to show an”upward sloping to the right” growth curve. In other words, virtually every forecast predicts significant to strong growth.

That seems to be true whether one looks at single-country or global forecasts. Of course, as always, global forecasts can obscure as much as they illuminate. Most of the near-term deployment of IoT will happen in a relative handful of countries.

So far, by some forecasts, North America represents as much as 45 percent of the global total, Asia perhaps 30 percent, Europe perhaps 20 percent.

source: Business Insider

source: marketsandmarkets

More U.S. Teens Watch YouTube Than Linear TV

Whether YouTube is a “substitute” product for linear TV is debatable. What apparently is harder to debate is that YouTube is a preferred venue for consumer video consumption among U.S. teenagers.

In a survey of U.S. teenagers, analysts at Piper Jaffray found teens spent more time watching YouiTube than watching linear TV. Though 37 percent of respondents reported watching Netflix, 26 percent said they watched YouTube, compared to 25 percent who reported watching linear TV.

And 40 percent say their top shopping website is Amazon, leading other sites by an order of magnitude.

source: Piper Jaffray

The Reason Why Video Entertainment is The Only Service To Increase Prices

Over the past several decades, it would have been a reasonable question to ask why entertainment video service prices grew faster than inflation, while retail prices for communications services (voice, texting, Internet access) declined, either on a price-per-unit basis or in terms of absolute price per unit.

The answer is simple: entertainment video is about the purchase of content, not access to content.

Compared to voice, texting or Internet access, entertainment video is more akin to fashion than a utility service. And that means retail price is not a direct function of production cost.

That is clear in the latest Federal Communications Commission report on content prices in the U.S. linear video market.

However, given diminished consumer appetite for the traditional “big content bundles” and a shift to over-the-top or on-demand viewing, it will be necessary for most, if not all, providers to “just say no” to content providers and restrict the size of bundles.

That is going to shift the way content gets to market, with increasing amounts of programming moving through new services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.

According to a new FCC report, the average monthly price of expanded basic service (the combined price of basic service and the most subscribed cable programming tier excluding taxes, fees, and customer premises equipment charges) for the communities surveyed grew by 2.7 percent over the 12 months ending January 1, 2015, to $69.03, compared to a decrease of 0.1 percent in the consumer price index.

That is to say, linear video prices rose by an order of magnitude more than the overall level of consumer prices.

This compares to a compound ten-year average rate of increase from 2005 to 2015 of 4.8 percent in the price of expanded basic and a 1.5 percent increase in the CPI.

To be sure, linear video providers have argued in the past that prices are up in large part because the number of channels offered in bundles has grown.

The price per channel (price divided by number of channels) for subscribers purchasing expanded basic service decreased by 1.8 percent over the 12 months ending January 1, 2015, to 46 cents per channel.

Over the 10 years from 2005-2015, the price per channel has declined by 1.4 percent on an average annual compound basis.

In the past, consumers might not have had as much choice. In the future, they will. Prices are going to come down. Still, the issue is whether entertainment video might still outperform voice, texting or Internet access, in some cases, in terms of absolute revenue contribution, price per unit or profit margin.

source: FCC

Google Will Go "Mobile First" for Search

The business strategy known as mobile-first is affecting Google’s continued development of its search business.

Google is going to create a separate mobile index within months, becoming the main or “primary” index that the search engine uses to respond to queries.

A separate desktop index will be maintained, but will not be as up-to-date as the mobile index, it is expected.

Gigabit Era for Mobile: Telefónica and Telia Make Strides

The gigabit era for mobile Internet access is coming faster than many believe.

New improvements in 4G platforms will boost 4G network speeds to a gigabit per second on Telefónica networks in Spain, while Telia plans to launch 5G in 2018, supplying gigabit speeds--and possibly multi-gigabit speeds--as well.

Telia plans to launch commercial 5G services in Sweden and Estonia in 2018, and recently demonstrated 5G operating in a real world environment over a live network.

The system used 800 MHz of spectrum in the 15 GHz band and achieved peak rates of 15 gigabits per user, and a latency below three milliseconds.

Separately, Telefónica, Nokia, and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. have demonstrated download speeds of up to 800 Mbps on Telefónica’s Long Term Evolution 4G mobile network. That is part of work the company is taking to boost peak speeds on its 4G network to a gigabit per second over the next few years.

The test used Nokia radio network equipment and a test terminal equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE modem.

To achieve the new throughput, two radio carriers were used, allowing mobile terminals to simultaneously download data from two frequency bands.  MIMO 4x4 technology (Multiple-input Multiple-output) also was used, multiplying the number of data flows that a mobile terminal can use with a given cell.

Also, the new 256QAM modulation (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) also was employed. Taken together. All of these technologies will be introduced into the Telefónica Spain radio network.

Are Webscale App Providers Shaping Core Telecom Platform Trends?

Webscale Internet companies (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon) now are exerting a “markedly increased influence” on markets for communications service. Analysts at Heavy Reading now think the webscale players also increasingly are shaping the market for networking hardware, software and services.

That will be a contentious point of view, even if many telecom industry execs and others think that is true, to some extent.

Google and Facebook are developing new backhaul and access platforms. Google Fiber does buy industry-standard optical access networks as well.

But Facebook mostly is looking at open source platforms that can be manufactured by supplied by industry suppliers.

Clearly, there is impact in terms of buying behavior in the case of Google Fiber, and development potential in the open source efforts by Facebook.

At least some telecom industry professionals believe the webscale providers are "leading in networking innovation"; are "increasingly calling the shots"; increasingly "building out their own telecom infrastructure" and that "it's a matter of time before one of these guys buys one of the big CSPs (communications service providers).”

A Heavy Reading analyst team interviewed more than a dozen leading network infrastructure professionals at leading CSPs at the CTO, VP and director level, as well as more than 25 senior individuals in network equipment vendors at CTO, VP and director level; plus several leaders in key telecom industry associations, standards bodies and other specialist consultancies; and some of the WICs themselves.

The primary and secondary research was complemented by a Heavy Reading online survey, generating responses from 82 qualified respondents in network equipment vendors and 57 from qualified respondents in CSPs.

Keep in mind that about half the 82 vendor respondents came from individuals from one vendor company.

Around half came from vendors from whom two or more (but no more than four) respondents supplied responses. Those companies from which two or more respondents participated include ADVA, Broadsoft, Casa Systems, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, F5, Huawei, HP, IBM, Infinera, Juniper Networks, Nokia, NetScout, Vasona Networks and Radisys.

As you might expect, the online respondents identified Google as the webscale player posing the greatest threat to communications service providers.

Source: Heavy Reading

Sprint, Sprint Foundation to Make Free Mobile Service Available to One Million High School Students

Sprint and the Sprint Foundation will help change the lives of one million high school students by giving them free mobile devices and free Internet access.

The One Million Project is supported in part by device donations from handset suppliers. Sprint and the Sprint Foundation will raise funds through special events, donation drives and other activities aimed at employees and customers, as well as company-owned, dealer, and national retail stores across the country.  

Sprint will work with non-profit agencies including EveryoneOn and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance which will help to recruit community organizations such as schools, libraries, public-housing authorities, and non-profits to deliver the devices and activate the mobile internet service, usable by students for up to four years in high school.

Each student may receive either a free smartphone, tablet, laptop or hotspot device and 3GB of high-speed LTE data per month.

Unlimited data is available at 2G speeds if usage exceeds 3GB in a month. Those who receive a smartphone can use it as a hotspot and for unlimited domestic calls and texts while on the Sprint network.