Windstream Doubles Access Speed

Windstream has doubled the Internet speeds available across most of its 16-state network, offering 12 Mbps service in certain areas and expanding the availability of 3 Mbps and 6 Mbps service. The company now offers 3 Mbps service to virtually all of its broadband addressable lines as a result of the network upgrade.

“Windstream experienced a four-fold increase in Internet usage in 2007 as our broadband customer base grew 28 percent year-over-year,” says Ric Crane, executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

Windstream high-speed Internet service is available at any speed – including 12 Mbps, 6 Mbps, 3 Mbps and 1.5 Mbps – for $19.99 per month for the first six months with qualifying services in participating areas.

Comcast Boosts Business Class Access Speed

Comcast has boosted its "Business Class" Internet access speed from 8 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream, to 16 Mbps and 1 Mbps, respectively. The increase, offered in all Comcast markets, comes at no extra cost. Prices for the MSO's Business Class Internet service range from $59 to $89 per month.

Unmanaged bandwidth is getting cheaper and faster all the time, despite the fears some have had that a strong duopoly in the U.S. market would inhibit such moves. The task now remains for providers of quality-assured bandwidth to make the case for why managed bandwidth is more important, has value, and is priced accordingly.

Fixed Mobile Convergence Drives Quad Play

Fixed mobile convergence might be shaping up as a key driver of "logical" quadruple play bundles. Of the top values cited by respondents to a Compete survey in early 2008, three of the four most important features involved integration of home (fixed) phones and mobiles.

Another significant finding: 97 percent of consumers were most interested in the broadband Internet service component of the bundle.

These two top findings suggest that FMC is as big a deal as many say, and that broadband has emerged, at least among technology-savvy users, as the single most important service delivered by a wired network.

The new survey also is interesting in suggesting that consumers finally are figuring out conditions under which a wireless service is a "logical" part of a bundle.

In past years, people seem to have better understood or accepted the idea that a voice service and Internet access service "go together." They now are comfortable with the idea that video and Internet access go together, or that voice and video can be bought in a package.

Wireless and wired voice service seems to have been less obviously a logical bundle for most consumers. But the ability to integrate the mobile and landline phone obviously is resonating in a new way.

Compete says interest in bundles increased 55 percent from July 2007 through March 2008.

More than four out of 10 respondents say they would either be "likely" or "very likely" to consider purchasing mobile phone service from their telecommunications provider.

Stronger FiOS Growth than DSL at Verizon

Verizon digital subscriber line growth in the first quarter was up sequentially about six percent, a fact that leads some to conclude that DSL adds are slowing. There's some truth to that, caused primarily by growing saturation of the broadband access market.

FiOS account additions were up to 23 percent, sequentially, though. Some customers logically are upgrading from DSL to FiOS, though.

Some observers might argue that Verizon's churn rate is up. That's obviously caused by current DSL customers upgrading to FiOS. Excluding the internal upgrades, the churn rate for DSL services hasn't budged, Verizon executives say.

In the most-recent quarter FiOS net subscriber counts were up by one million, year over year, while net DSL subs were up about 170,000.

Unlimited Mobile Plans Are Revenue Accretive

Despite fears of a new and devastating price war caused by unlimited calling plans, the opposite seems to be occurring.

Quite to the contrary, the new plans seem to be encouraging users to trade up, and add more-capacious data plans as well, at least at Verizon Wireless.

"In the first quarter our unlimited plan accounted for 13 percent of our single line retail post-paid adds, says Denny Strigl, Verizon Communications COO. "That compares to about four percent choosing the $99 or above tiers before the plan was launched." Lots more users seem to be trading up to the more-expensive plans, in other words.

"We’re seeing good growth in high tier voice plans," says Strighl. There are churn benefits, which was the impetus for the plan. What might have been unforeseen is the increase in usage of data services and aggregate growth of customers moving up to the $90 plan from lower-revenue plans.

"Additionally, a high percentage of the new customers who choose an unlimited plan also choose our select or premium data packages," says Strigl.

"In March, which was the first full month after the launch, our average daily disconnects declined six percent from previous months and that is at the voice access tier $79 and above," says Strigl.

It appears that there are more users willing to trade up than there are heavy users finding they can save money by trading down, in other words.

$6.6 Billion U.S. Mobile Media Revenues by 2012

U.S. mobile media and entertainment revenue will grow to $6.6 billion in 2012 from $3.1 billion in 2007, according to Analysys Research.

Analysys said that most of the growth will not happen until after 2010, when the technical and market environment for mobile media and entertainment is expected to improve.

Up to this point, mobile TV, music and other content has been patchy in coverage, limited in content and expensive.

That is less true globally, Analysys says. Total spending on mobile media services by consumers and advertisers worldwide will grow to more than $102 billion in 2012 from about $47 billion in 2007.

"Relative growth in consumer spending on mobile media applications will be surpassed by advertisers, as they look to exploit the maturing cellular content channel as a means to deliver their marketing and advertising messages to key target segments," said David Kerr, vice president at Strategy Analytics.

The New Conventional IT Wisdom

It is perhaps a commentary on how much things have changed that the U.K.-based research group Butler Group can put out a new research report that confirms what the consensus is.

Butler Group says organizations are moving from traditional hierarchies based on command and control to looser structures featuring collaboration and team work, with a fundamental shift from one-to-one to many-to-many communication.

Communications service providers typically worry more about access line shrinkage, margins on minutes of use and adoption of new services, than about changes in user communication modes. But Butler Group's point about many-to-many communication is key.

It implies a growing shift to "broadcast" modes of communication such as blogs, Twitter-style streaming and social networking mechanisms.

Organizations also are beginning to expand past their traditional boundaries found in the past, which is driving the need for IP infrastructure.

There is a requirement for greater location independence, with remote working becoming more popular and many employees no longer remaining in one place for any great length of time, the research group says.

"It is becoming apparent that the existing separate silo-ed infrastructures are no longer the answer," Butler Group says.

"A services-based approach is best suited to this environment," Butler Group says.

That means Web services, says Mark Blowers, Butler Group director.

"Moving away from proprietary solutions for voice and data to a horizontal communications architecture will enable the communications environment to be broken down into separate layers, making use of industry standards to integrate the hardware, common services, and administration elements," he says.

All of that shows what the new consensus is. Web services, software as a service, open networks, remote and cross-boundary communications. Most significant of all, from a service provider perspective, is the move to "many-to-many" communications. That could be as significant as the shift from wired to wireless communications.