CEOs, Managers Using Social Media for Work

You might be surprised to learn that social media is being actively used by business managers, including CEOs, to keep track of news and conduct research, in addition to keeping up with friends.

In a recent survey of 337 social media users in North America and Europe, about 84 percent of social media users indicated they use it to keep up to date on news, while 78 percent also indicated they use social media "to get ideas to help me in my job," says Nigel Fenwick, Forrester Research analyst.

2010: A Turning Point for Telecom?

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Some years in telecommunications are pivotal: 1934, 1982, 1996 and 2000, for example, set into motion huge changes that fundamentally shaped the entire industry in transformative ways. Will 2010 prove to be a pivotal year? It might be. One can easily foresee that regulatory frameworks such as "network neutrality" and the "national broadband plan," could affect business models for years to come.

But those are not the only changes. There are new 4G wireless networks coming on line that could, for the first time, drive mobile broadband substitution as smartphone penetration grows from 15% to 50%. Beyond that, questions linger on how consumer behavior was shaped by the "great recession" and if these changes in buying behavior are permanent.

This webinar takes a look at all those questions and discuss possible implications. When the regulatory environment, business models, fundamental technologies and end user demand curves all at change at once, transformative and historical changes are likely.

Social Networking is a Time Waster, Telecommuters Report

Mobile or remote access to email still tops the list of perceived productivity-enhancing tools telecommuters have access to, a survey by iPass finds.

About 85 percent said remote email access enhanced productivity, eclipsing even telephone access, at 75 percent. About 67 percent suggested text messaging and 66 percent reported that instant messaging boosted productivity.

Surprisingly, but maybe not for millions of people who routinely must attend lots of meetings, just 54 percent of mobile workers said meetings enhanced their productivity, while just 48 percent said travel was productivity enhancing. The former report suggests many meetings actually impede people getting their work done, while the latter finding probably only confirms that travel is a time-consuming activity that likewise prevents people from getting more work done.

And despite its popularity, 78 percent of mobile employees report that social media is a drain on their work productivity, as many suspect. Much social networking is a diversion from work, not an enabler of work.

Telecommuters Work Longer Hours, iPass Finds

Do you think you and your co-workers are the only people working much-longer hours than you used to? You are not alone. Though the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated the average employee workday at 8.8 hours in 2008, iPass finds after analyzing its data that the average workday for mobile workers was one hour longer, closer to 10 hours a day.

About 34 percent of survey respondents say they work 55 hours or more a week, or at least 11 hours a day. Such workers also telecommute more frequently than the other segments. About eight percent report they are "always" working.

About 62 percent telecommuted at least one day a week, for example. Perhaps not surprisingly, 13 percent they did see a negative impact on their work-life balance.

About 47 percent of respondents say they work 45 to 55 hours a week; in line with modern workday averages.

About 18 percent of respondents report working 40 or fewer hours a week, are most likely to go into the office every day, and less likely to telecommute.

In fact, 19 percent did not telecommute at all.


The surveys suggest, contrary to what some employers seem to believe, that in-office workers spend less time working than workers who are allowed to telecommute, though it is likely the findings are skewed to the extent that telecommuting works best for employees whose jobs are "outcomes" related and are relatively easy to measure.

Skype Expects 1 billion Users by 2015

Skype Technologies expects it will reach one billion registered users, nearly double its current registered user base, by 2015, and half those customers were be business users, says David Gurle, Skype VP.

Business customers will bring in 20 percent to 30 percent more revenue on average than consumers, Gurle predicts.

Since 2009 revenue was $716 million with a bit more than half a billion accounts, if accounts nearly double to about a billion, then Skype income could hit the $1.5 billion level in 2015.

Those figures tell quite a story about the demise of the legacy voice business, which had been underpinned by high-margin international calling and widespread use of fixed lines for voice. In 2000, for example U.S. carriers alone billed $15 billion in international voice revenues. By 2007, U.S. carriers bill about $6.5 billion in international voice, according to Federal Communications Commission data.

Skype now represents 12 percent of international long distance traffic, and earns $716 million. It would be fair to suggest that, 10 years ago, 12 percent of itnernational long distance would have been worth as much as two orders of magnitude more gross revenue.

Skype expects 1 billion users by 2015 - The Boston Globe

Bandwidth Implications of Online Video

It remains to be seen whether more use of Internet delivery for today's video entertainment programming is a good thing for access providers, whatever it may mean for other contributors to the video ecosystem.

The reason is the sheer cost impact of supplying enough bandwidth to support even a part of today's viewing requirements.

Video, in fact, is the chief reason there is a growing gap between ISP revenue from providing access services and the revenue that can be earned by providing such access (click image for larger view).

To be sure, multiple approaches will be taken to better match demand and supply. Price increases, retail price plans better tailored to actual consumption, wireless offload to fixed networks, signal compression and other efforts are likely.

Does Intense Price Competition Drive U.S. Wireless Industry Concentration?

Can price and other forms of competition beneficial for users still occur when markets are highly concentrated? Yes, say Jerry B. Duvall and George S. Ford of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies. The question now matters, once again, as the Federal Communications Commission seems to be hinting it thinks the U.S. wireless market is growing unduly concentrated.

The important observation is that, in some markets, even high levels of supplier concentration do not preclude important, even robust levels of competition, on price, quality and other dimensions.

When analyzing levels of competition in a market, economists often, and rationally,  infer it from the level of industry concentration, where higher levels of concentration indicate the presence of market power. But industry concentration is related to the size of a market as well as high sunk costs or intense price competition, or some combination.

High industry concentration can be the result of a limited market or high fixed costs, as for a water, electricity or wastewater system, for example, all cases where fixed costs are so that facilities-based competition is not possible.

In some other markets, high capital investment requirements can create huge barriers to entry. Where that barrier exists, even when competition increases because of new entrants in a market, market concentration could still increase, even in the face of price competition. Market concentration appears to reach a lower bound, despite continuing growth in the size of the market.

It is possible that the apparent lower bound on market concentration could reflect economic and technological constraints that continuing growth in the number of competitors will not, and cannot, affect. In other words, some markets might always feature few competitors, for logical reasons. Few today would agree that telecommunications is a natural monopoly. But neither would many agree that the number of facilities-based contestants can be a large number.

The video entertainment market is less price competitive than the broadband access, fixed voice or wireless markets, but perhaps not because the number of competitors is notably less.

The implication is that telecommunications market structure will always be relatively concentrated compared to industries where entry does not require substantial upfront capital costs.

The relationship between the number of firms and market power, where market power is defined as the ability of firms to price above marginal cost, implies that that some communications firms will now, and in the future, possess some degree of market power, Duvall and Ford say. Competition will not be "perfect," but rather workable.

Still, there is an important observation: tthe more intense is price competition the higher is industry concentration. The typical view of competition has price competition increasing with declines in industry concentration. In other words, the more firms in a market, the more “competitive” that market is.

The implication is that high concentration can be the result of intense price competition, rather than market defects.

In the summer of 2000, the proposed merger of MCI-WorldCom and Sprint was abandoned due to the
challenge of the merger by antitrust authorities. In retrospect, one can note that faulty conclusions were drawn from incomplete analysis. Market power in the long distance industry actually was illusory. Even strong industry concentration did not actually imply serious market power, as price competition, for example, was intense.

The obvious implication is that high levels of wireless industry concentration do not preclude or foreclose robust levels of competition. In fact, robust competition causes industry concentration. See http://www.phoenix-center.org/pcpp/PCPP10Final.pdf, for example.