Despite Declining Demand, U.S. Local Phone Service Prices are Rising

As a rule, retail and wholesale prices of connectivity products tend to drop with time, much as prices for computing and storage also do. But the trend is not uniform. Prices for some products rise, even if the overall trend is for lower prices. 

In the U.S. consumer market, linear video subscription prices have increased almost yearly for decades. In U.S. business markets, private line prices climbed after deregulation but then began to fall about 2012 as demand shifted to ethernet access services. 

Consumers might have a sense that internet access prices have increased, but U.S. internet access prices fell between 2004 and 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Using 2004 prices as the benchmark, prices in 2020 were about 61.5 percent of 2004 levels, according to BLS data. 

source; BLS

That same trend also operates globally, as a rule, according to the Alliance for Affordable Internet, even when looking at mobile data, which generally is more expensive than fixed network data. 

By way of comparison, private line services purchased by businesses and other organizations have spiked since about 1995, but in 2020 remain just a percentage point above 1995 levels. That is likely because demand has largely shifted to ethernet-based access services.  

source: BLS

Traditional local phone service prices since deregulation have risen about 45 percent, which might be surprising. What happened is that business profits, which once subsidized consumer services, substantially decreased, forcing consumer prices to reflect more of the actual cost of providing those services. 

Also, a more-recent trend is that demand has steadily decreased since about 2000, so the costs of the network essentially are spread over a much-smaller base of customers. That tends to work against price decreases. 

source: BLS

5G Health Issues from Millimeter Wave "Very Low" to "Nonexistent"

Health issues caused by 5G mobile networks are “very low, if they exist at all,” concludes a  group of health experts who study environmental and health issues associated with electromagnetic exposures from across the non-ionizing spectrum. 

“The likelihood of yet unknown health hazards at exposure levels within current exposure limits is considered to be very low, if they exist at all,” they say. “We anticipate that in all cases, exposure levels will remain well below major international exposure limits and that network operators will be aware of their obligation to maintain their systems within compliant operating parameters. 

“When exposure levels are maintained below current exposure limits, neither health agencies nor guideline/standards setting organizations have identified hazards from exposure to millimeter waves or RF signals in lower frequency bands used in previous generation technologies,” the group says. 

“First, unlike lower frequency fields, MMW (millimeter wave signals) do not penetrate beyond the outer skin layers and thus do not expose inner tissues to MMW,” they point out.  “Second, current research indicates that overall levels of exposure to RF are unlikely to be significantly altered by 5G, and exposure will continue to originate mostly from the “uplink” signals from one’s own device (as they do now).”

“Third, exposure levels in publicly accessible spaces will remain well below exposure limits established by international guideline and standard setting organizations, including ICNIRP and IEEE,” they add. 

Traditionally, the concern with non-ionizing radiation of the type routinely used by mobile networks is tissue heating. But “whole-body heating is not a concern for millimeter wave exposure because the deposition of RF energy is confined to the outermost layers of the body.”

Will We Really See a Change in Growth Rate for Work from Home?

Most observers seem certain that work from home trends will get a permanent boost from Covid-19 experiences. The only real question is how big a change might occur, as WFH has slowly been growing for decades. As with other trends, the pandemic might accelerate an ongoing trend. The magnitude is the issue. 

Remote work is  distinct from “work from home full time,” has a few meanings. It can refer to those full-time employees of a company who telecommute, rather than work on site.  It includes organization employees who work from home at least some of the time, travel for work or bring work home. 

But it also includes home-based workers. Those are very different use cases. 

By some estimates, as much as 17 percent of workers  essentially are full time WFH. In other cases, including those who telecommute a few times a month, the percentage of workers doing WFH is as low as five to six percent. 

But if you count traveling employees who sometimes work outside the office, possibly 63 percent of all workers sometimes work from outside the office. 

source: SlideModel

But many jobs cannot be performed at home, and that might include as much as 63 percent of all U.S. jobs, for example. To that one might add work done by home-based businesses. 

“According to the 2018 American Time Use Survey, less than a quarter of all full-time workers work at all from home on an average day, and even those workers typically spend well less than half of their working hours at home,” say economists Jonathan Dingel and Brent Nieman. 

Doubtless all the types of remote work, telecommuting and work from home will get an extra boost after the pandemic. The issue is whether the growth curve changes enough to notice. Many suppliers who benefit from WFH hope so.

But lots of changes are fairly short lived, as business and consumer behavior might suggest after the internet bubble burst and Great Recession of 2008. Lasting impact can be hard to spot, as prior trends simply reasserted themselves.

Flat Growth for Asia Telcom in 2020; Return to Growth in 2021

Average revenue growth for the Asia-Pacific telecom business will be flat to low-digit to single-digit in 2020, compared to four percent in 2019, according to Fitch Ratings. Growth will return to pre-pandemic levels in 2021.

source: Fitch Ratings

Balance sheets will be maintained by cost cutting and capital investment reductions or dividend cuts, says Fitch. 

In most countries discretionary capex has been slowed to conserve cash, without skipping necessary capacity investment. But Korea, China and Singapore are pressing ahead with 5G plans. 

In part, that is a reflection of the importance of mobile broadband average revenue in some of those countries. South Korea mobile ARPU is higher than fixed network internet access, for example. In Singapore, mobile ARPU is equal to fixed network internet access ARPU. 

source: Fitch Ratings

The other noteworthy observation is that capex intensity is far lower in Singapore and South Korea than in India or the Philippines, for example. It is easier to sustain capex programs in adverse circumstances when capital investment is a lower percentage of revenue. 

source: Fitch Ratings

Internet Access will be 64% of Total Service Provider Revenue in 2024, Says Omdia

The two biggest revenue drivers for connectivity providers in 2024 will be mobile data and fixed network broadband, according to Omdia analysts. Internet access, in fact, will be 64 percent of total connectivity provider revenues in 2024. Voice services on all networks will generate 14 percent of total revenue. 

source: Omdia

Global revenue trends will be negative for voice, positive for internet access, smart home and video. Mobile data revenue will grow about twice as fast as fixed internet services. 

Service	Revenue $ Billion	% of Total
Mobile Voice	147	10%
Fixed Voice	61	4%
MobileText	14	1%
Mobile Data	570	41%
Fixed Data	329	23%
Video	120	9%
Smart Home	162	12%
Total	1403

Source: Omdia data, IP Carrier calculation

In terms of strategy, revenue growth will be most critical for mobile data, since that is the single biggest revenue driver. Voice services and messaging simply must be harvested and run to maintain profit margin. The growth areas of video and smart home must be cultivated.

Will Internet Access Patterns Return to Normal?

The percentage of subscribers provisioned for gigabit service increased to 3.75 percent in the first quarter of 2020 year-over-year, essentially driving changes in a couple of months that otherwise might have taken a year, according to OpenVault. But what remains to be seen is the sustainability of those trends, once most people return to work and school. 

What is clear is that average data consumption at the end of the first quarter jumped to 402.5 gigabytes, an increase of 47 percent over the same quarter of 2019, when the average was 273.5 GB.

The areas of sharpest growth were power users consuming one terabyte or more of data. The percentage of subscribers who were power users in 1Q20 reached 10 percent,  an increase of 138 percent over the 4.2 percent of power users in 1Q19.

Median usage was 233.6 GB, up 60 percent from 1Q19 levels, driven by heavier media consumption, Open Vault says.

B2B Sales Just as Effective When Remote? Really?

A survey of business-to-business executives by McKinsey has found that virtually all firms in the B2B space have adapted to Covid-19 pandemic “stay at home” rules by shifting to online support and e-commerce, while dramatically shrinking in-person sales. 

Over a few months, 60 percent to 70 percent of those executives say they believe remote sales are just as effective as the former in-person sales methods. 

That might shock you. “Remote selling” is 60 percent to 70 percent “just as effective” as in-person selling? 

source: McKinsey

Maybe not. 

If they really believed that remote sales truly were “just as effective” as in-person sales, the percentage of respondents who believe they are “very likely” to  be doing so a year after the end of the pandemic restrictions would not be half, or less than half, of those same respondents. 

B2B Executive Views on Remote Selling
source: McKinsey
Country	% Remote	% "Just as Effective"	% Very Likely to Keep 1 Yr. Afer	% Somewhat Likely to Keep 1 Yr. After
Asia Pacific	96	70	35	48
Japan	93	68	18	45
United States	96	65	32	47
China	98	70	30	61
Europe	97	60	28	50
Global	96	64	32	48

source: McKinsey

Keep in mind that intentions in such surveys often do not match actual behavior, no matter how sincerely opinions might be held. 

At least in part, even respondents reporting they are “very likely” to continue with “remote” go to market strategies after the pandemic is over might be thinking of e-commerce and online support activities, not direct sales. 

I might very well be wrong, but a “new normal” where B2B sales activities are not conducted face to face seems highly unlikely. 

In other realms, such as after sales customer support, online delivery does make sense, and likely will continue at a higher level than before.

In other areas, internal meetings, training and routine support operations are likely to continue using newer forms of remote communication, if not always significantly higher levels of remote communication. 

That scenario likely hinges on a permanent shift to remote work at significant scale, and that is likely not to be as robust a trend as many expect.