Wireless: Fixing What Isn't Broken?

The Federal Communictions Commission says it wants to examine exclusive wireless carrier deals with handset makers because it may be "anti-competitive. But Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett says "it’s laughable" assertion.

Moffett argues that the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice are wasting their time reviewing the wireless market. Wireless providers don't have market power, handset manufacturers increasingly do.

Apple has taken any power that AT&T has had, Bernstein argues.

Wireless prices are falling as carriers compete, handset makers are gaining more power in the ecosystem and the wireless game is about apps, a game carriers cannot control.

"The argument that handset exclusivity is anticompetitive also comes at a curious time," says Moffat.

"Indeed, a case can be made that handset makers – well, Apple, actually – have played one carrier off against the other in virtuoso fashion, and are on the brink of stealing the wireless business from the wireless carriers," says Bernstein.

Moffett says iTunes provides a better analogy.

"Apple’s direct-to-consumer end run around the wireless industry is in many ways simply a repeat of its brilliant negotiation with the music industry at the dawn of iTunes back in 2001," Moffat says. "Less than a decade later, Apple has managed to capture considerable value from the music industry as it sells ever more iPods."

Customer loyalty is to Apple, not AT&T.

"Something more profound than just short term economics is afoot," he says. "Apple has radically tilted the strategic playing field away from the network operator in favor of the device manufacturer"

"Remarkably, Apple has so thoroughly stolen the customer relationship – who would argue that Apple iPhone customers’ first affinity is to the device rather than to the network – that the network is not only irrelevant, it is rather a source of derision," says Moffat.

The iPhone seems to be doing just fine at "wrecking" the wireless business without the government’s help.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/148431-forget-the-feds-apple-is-doing-just-fine-wrecking-the-wireless-business?source=feed

O2 Offers 600 Free Tweets

The UK's second-largest largest mobile phone network, O2, will allow customers to use Twitter for free, up to 600 total messages, starting in August.

The move says something about the cost of sending and receiving text messages in the U.K. market, the new role social networking is playing in driving mobile data usage and suggesting the growth of a new niche within the mobility space.

As Blackberry devices catered to email centric users, and iPhones catered to mobile Web users, we should now see the emergence of service plans, and perhaps devices, optimzied for social networking or texting.

"We believe that mobile will soon become the most popular way of accessing social networking sites, giving real-time access to tweets and status updates wherever you are," says Antony Douglas, the head of content at O2.

O2's move follows Vodafone's earlier move to allow free Twitter status updates, though Vodafone's offer is billed as a "limited time" offer.

The move by O2 is a result of a deal between Twitter and the UK's mobile phone networks struck earlier this year. That deal followed Twitter's decision to stop its text message update service in 2008 as a result of the high cost of sending texts over the UK's networks.

Orange and T-Mobile are expected to produce their own Twitter services soon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/13/o2-free-twitter-service

U.S. Online Advertising Grows One Percent a Year

The Internet’s share of total media ad spending is rising by at least one percentage point every year, partly because marketers are spending more on Internet ads, and less on ads in traditional media.

As often is the case for businesses with a key technology component, productivity improvements are not captured accurately by retail prices or spending.

Online advertising works better than offline media, so campaigns sometimes, perhaps most of the time, can be run for less money than has been the case in the past. As the shift to online media continues, overall advertising spending by brands can decline even as effectiveness increases.

In the United States, eMarketer projects that the online share of ad dollars will grow from nearly 10 percent this year to slightly more than 15 percemt in 2013.

16,000 More Cell Sites Needed for Ubiquitous Mobile Broadband

About 23.2 million U.S. residents live in areas where 3G wireless broadband service has not yet been deployed and that about 43 percent of roads lack such coverage, says CTIA.

It will require an additional investment of about $22 billion to reach those areas with a dual-mode network.

The study says about 16,000 new cell sites, including towers, will need to be constructed and 55,000 existing sites will need to be upgraded to create a ubiquitousnational mobile broadband network.

Mobile Broadband: New Business Models Needed?

The good news is that mobile broadband--using PC dongles or cards or mobile handsets--is growing fast. The bad news is that all that new data traffic is straining mobile networks.

Irish regulator ComReg, for example, notes that there were 1.27 million broadband subscribers at the end of March, up 28 percent from a year earlier and up six percent from the previous quarter.

But this has been driven mainly by mobile broadband subscriptions, which have almost doubled over a year with 90.6 percent growth.

And Ericsson predicts that mobile broadband connections will surpass fixed broadband connections as soon as 2010 (click image for a larger view).

Originally "dimensioned" to cope with small-screen devices used occasionally, 3G networks are having to cope with laptop-sized video downloads, hours-long social networking sessions and rich Web 2.0 sites which download content "in the background".

In some cases, says researchers at Telco 2.0, the revenues from mobile broadband services are not even covering the costs of delivering data to the users.

That suggests mobile operators may have to revisit their pricing and packaging plans.

Today, most mobile broadband subscribers buy traditional monthly contracts, typically over 12 to 24 month periods. The problem is the perceived value versus price, if an increasing number of mobile broadband devices are put into service and most of those devices use little data.

Broadband connectivity costs are evaluated one way when a single connection at home can be shared among many users, and when usage is fairly frequent. Broadband costs will be looked at quite differently when each user must buy multiple connections on a device-by-device basis.

That suggests an eventual need for pricing mechanisms of all sorts, most based on ways to better match usage to cost. Session-based access, similar to the familiar WiFi hotspot model, is one option. Temporary access is yet another possibility.

Bundling of mobile broadband with other services such as fixed broadband or mobile voice services, or creation of broadband family plans, are other options.

Ad-supported access is conceivable, though the model has not worked all that well for communications services, at least so far.

Prepaid and casual use models also likely will be needed. Perhaps most users will be comfortable paying for a home fixed broadband connection and then mobile broadband for their smart phones.

But as game players, music players, cameras or other devices start to benefit from broadband connectivity, episodic use plans at relatively low prices seem inevitable.

Sprint Drops Bombshell

Sprint has decided to outsource all of its network operations to Ericsson as part of a seven-year deal that indicates Sprint no longer considers network operations a core function, or something that allows it to create customer-facing value.

Network operators have been outsourcing some operations and functions for years. But no tier-one carrier has gone this far. Sprint will continue to own its network and make investment and equipment purchase decisions.

Sprint personnel will maintain first-line, customer-facing operations. But Sprint no longer considers the day-to-day management of its network a core source of market differentiation.

The move does not indicate any change in the perceived value of network ownership. But the devaluation of routine network management is shocking for an industry where most employees once worked in network operations.

Apple iPhone Proves Disruptive

Apple and Nokia are on radically different trajectories, at least where it comes to smart phone market share, say analysts at Generator Research. The firm believes Nokia will tumble from about 40 percent share today to just 20 percent in 2013.

Apple's share, meanwhile, should accelerate and hit 33 percent of the market at the same point.

Apple would match Nokia's share sometime in 2011 and ship as many as 77 million phones that year.

Observers rightly point out that the mobile handset is a complicated business with lots of subtle angles. It also appears to be a business where new attackers can dislodge global incumbents.