Fluid Cable-Telco Marketing Battles

Nearly 60 percent of surveyed households now have bundled services (telecommunication, internet, and video services), a 13 percent increase since 2007, according to new research by CFI Group. So far, though, cable companies are much more likely to serve bundle buyers, compared to telecom companies. Cable companies subscribe twice as many customers to bundled services as telecoms do, CFI Group says. 

And telcos have some work to do: Digital subscriber line services appear to be losing ground, compared to cable modem alternatives. Still, the battleground is fluid: customers increasingly asensitive to rising rates and poor customer service coming from cable providers, CFI suggests. 

Some 70 percent of customers cite high rates as one reason for canceling cable TV service, while poor customer service accounts for 40 percent of churn from cable TV service.

Of customers who will switch carriers, 40 percent say that the competition offers better rates and plans. 

Customers also seem to be more willing to switch wireless carriers than they were in 2007. Verizon leads all wireless carriers in customer satisfaction and Verizon customers are the least likely to switch carriers. Sprint/Nextel customers are the least satisfied and the most likely to switch.

Nearly 50 percent of households are interested in VoIP and IPTV, but awareness for either has changed little over the past year.

Bundling preferences are likely to change as telcos turn up new video services. Despite cable’s current lead, customers would prefer to bundle communications services with telecommunication companies over cable companies by a two to one margin, CFI Group says. However, 29 percent of customers have no intention of bundling at all, preferring instead to pick and choose the services that best meet their needs.

And though consumers often say "convenience" is why they buy bundles, lower costs probably are the primary driver. The vast majority of customers who choose bundled services make the decision based on price, CFI Group says. Still, 46 percent of customers say they chose a bundled plan because it simplifies billing. Most customers who intend to switch carriers will also choose better pricing and a simplified bill, CFI Group says. 

The predicted growth rate for bundling is nine to 17 percent over the next 12 months, slowing slightly over previous years. The greatest opportunity is in meeting the growing market demand for video services provided by telcos. If telecoms are able to provide fiber services to new access areas quickly, and market them effectively, the split of new bundled customers between telecom and  cable could widen to 63 percent and 29 percent respectively, reversing the present pattern. 

Xohm Launches in Baltimore

Sprint Nextel Corp.has  launched its Xohm WiMAX-powered service for mobile customers in Baltimore. Contract-free service options include a $10 day pass, $25 monthly home Internet service and $30 monthly laptop service. Xohm modems cost $60 for a laptop card, an $80 home modem and has average downlink speeds of 2 to 4 megabits per second.

“This is truly an historic day with the birth of a completely new Internet-based business model that alters the dynamics of the traditional telecom industry,” says Barry West, Xohm president. 

Xohm hasn't yet achieved that with the launch; it couldn't have done so. It has created a new packaging for mobile access pricing. The day pass, reminiscent of Wi-Fi day pass pricing, is helpful. The $30 card or dongle pricing does undercut rival pricing from other providers. Prices for tethered service are roughly in line with what Clearwire already was offering. 

So far, though, Xohm does not appear to differ much from fixed broadband service, save for the pricing level. Where it clearly hopes to pose a challenge is to contract-based voice service, but Clearwire isn't promising it is going to make that its battleground. Right now, it mostly looks like a less-expensive, contract-free version of 3G mobility service, with better throughput. 

That's not a bad thing by any means. Still, Xohm's rhetoric is ahead of its vision, at the the moment. There are lots of reasons. One business model Xohm really wants to create is a simple, low-cost, casual use model beyond the day pass. That will require the ability to discover and authenticate new devices registering to the network. That means creating means to deal with MAC addresses and IP addresses not already registered in its authentication servers as a "current customer."

Supporting the typical user input operations on smaller devices other than PCs is an issue, but probably not so much as the authentication of new MAC and IP addresses whose users want to register for some relatively-casual use of the Xohm network. That means processes for 

discovery, certification, and management of new devices on the WiMax network, when network usage might be quite episodic. Right now it probably just means supporting WiMAX modems, whatever the form factor. 

What Xohm really wants is the ability to authenticate and provide service to MP3 players, electronic book readers and other devices mobile networks have not had to deal with in the past. We might be a year away from that. 

And that's when Xohm will start to fulfill its promise.

People Now Text More than Talk

The typical U.S. mobile subscriber sends and receives more SMS text messages than telephone calls, according to new research conducted byNielsen Mobile. 

During the second quarter of 2008, a typical U.S. mobile subscriber placed or received 204 phone calls each month.  In comparison, the average mobile customer sent or received 357 text messages per month, a 450 percent increase over the number of text messages circulated monthly during the same period in 2006.

U.S. teens (ages 13 to 17) had the highest levels of text messaging in the second quarter 2008, sending and receiving an average of 1,742 text messages per month. In comparison, teens took part in an average of 231 mobile phone calls per month, during the same time period.

Access Restrictions Will Hand Verizon a Marketing Advantage

Some U.S. communications executives say that service providers may have to implement tiered pricing to deal with the massive explosion in streaming video. Video might be growing even faster than most project, Lisa Guillaume Level 3 Communications VP. But Verizon Communications obviously thinks it will have an advantage if that happens. 

"There are choices that can be made in the home broadband market," says Doug Pasko, Verizon Communications principal member of technical staff . "It's not like video is a surprise -- we all saw it coming." If tiered pricing, bandwidth caps, traffic shaping and other bandwidth management techniques become an "industry standard" issue, Verizon will have a marketing advantage handed to it, as its FiOS access network simply has way more bandwidth than any of the other competitors. 

DirecTV to Stream to DVRs

DirecTV is betting that the Web will serve as a major technological ally as it tries to match cable in delivering on-demand video content.

The top U.S. satellite-TV provider now says DirecTV On Demand will deliver content over broadband Internet connections The service provides more than 4,000 standard-definition and HDTV titles through a DirecTV PlusHD DVR or R22 DVR receiver.

The service allows customers to download programming to their digital video recorders. 

Ditch the PBX?

Though it might not seem an approach very-large enterprises will want to take, at least not now, all sorts of smaller organizations might well find they do not need to buy new IP-based phone systems to take advantage of most of the features most users at most smaller organizations or branch offices will need. They might find it makes more sense to equip users with smart phones and then map hosted PBX features to those mobiles. In other cases it probably will make more sense to map hosted PBX features to both desk and mobile phones. 

The BroadSoft MobileMax Enterprise Edition Mobile Client is a software application that resides in the mobile user’s device and extends the functionality of a BroadSoft powered hosted solution to the mobile device, replicating desk phone functions. Among the features possible are "single number" service for both inbound and outbound calls, single voicemail, least cost routing, short code dialing,  transfer, redial, hold, conference, record, call waiting, simultaneous ring, conference calling, email and synchronization to PCs. 

Though it might seem an improbable choice, here's a scenario that is more likely by the day. An enterprise issues its employees a smart phone of their choice, and then maps phone system features to those mobiles, positioning the move as an employee benefit. Given the right companywide plan, users then can use the smart phones they want, for business and personal use, without having to worry about submitting reimbursement claims.

The other conceivable benefit is that employees can be issued new models periodically, as another benefit. Older users might need to get used to such things. Younger workers might find the deal appealing. Desk phones are hard to position as any sort of employee benefit. 

Use of a smart phone costing $400 to $700, with periodic replacement and ability to use the device for personal and business use can be positioned as a company benefit. 

Cloud Computing Changing Markets

Cloud computing today includes contestants in multiple markets, arguably based on existing segments that are reforming into one vast new and broad business, in much the same way that the "global telecom business" might be thought of as a single economic category, though it is composed of many distinct segments. 

There are myths, though, says Frank E. Gillett, Forrester Research analyst. One myth is that cloud service offerings are one large market. So far, as has been the case with other potential markets such as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), providers have rushed to rebrand existing offerings as "IMS compatible." The same thing is happening with cloud computing. 

Other misconceptions are that cloud computing mostly is synonymous with "virtualization" of servers or that cloud computing applications and services will compete on price. It is more than either of those trends, says Gillett.

In fact, one might distinguish at least five separate markets within the broader cloud computing universe. Two of these markets, Web-based services such as Google and software-as-a-service offerings such as salesforce.com, are known markets delivered from the cloud. In that sense, most consumers now use cloud computing applications. 

But there are business-to-business markets emerging as well, including the notion of  app-components-as-a-service, software-platform-as-a-service, and virtual-infrastructure-as-a-service. Those segments essentially provide building blocks for application and service providers to create retail offerings. 

So why might this be important for telecom or cable service providers? Cloud computing should change the way enterprises build their computing infrastructures, deemphasizing on-premises, "build your own" data centers and increasing demand for remotely-sited data centers. That should lead to a reconfiguration of the hosting business, at the very least, increasing the role for service providers and decreasing the role for smaller independent providers. 

Roughly the same thing is happening in the enterprise and consumer software businesses, shifting delivery from physical media to networked, online access. That likewise creates new demand for networking services, especially quality-assured networking services.