A survey sponsored by Honeywell claims a significant percentage of fliers would switch airlines, switch flights, pay more or give up amenties such as preferred seating or legroom to get access to Wi-Fi in flight that is consistent and faster.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Would You Change Airlines, Give up Legroom or Buy a More-Expensive Ticket to Get In-Flight Wi-Fi?
A survey sponsored by Honeywell claims a significant percentage of fliers would switch airlines, switch flights, pay more or give up amenties such as preferred seating or legroom to get access to Wi-Fi in flight that is consistent and faster.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
OECD Mobile Broadband Adoption 72%, Internet Access Exceeds 100% in Some Countries
Virtually everywhere else, revenue is growing.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Gigabit Network for Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles?
With the caveat that responding to a request for information is not the same as submitting a firm propisal, Time Warner Cable announced the company is "participating in the City of Los Angeles' request for information (RFI) process for the development of a communitywide broadband network that delivers gigabit-capable, high-speed, high-quality and affordable broadband connections to residences, businesses and city government."
TWC's response includes detailed information on its current and future network and product enhancements that will enable Time Warner Cable to deliver gigabit-per-second speeds for consumers in Los Angeles across TWC's existing network that already spans the city and neighboring communities.
That is a somewhat different matter, some would argue, than offering to build a citywide network on terms the city seeks.
But if a gigabit network is built, even only where Time Warner Cable operates, that would be significant.
It might also be useful for Comcast, which wants to buy Time Warner Cable. That promise could help regulators justify approval of the acquisition effort.
Inflection Point for Mobile Wallets?
Forty percent of people who make payments with their smartphones are more likely to use their Google Wallet than their actual wallet, according to Nielsen's second quarter 2014 Mobile Wallet Report.
The study — which surveyed 3,784 people who had used their smartphones or tablets for shopping, banking, or making payments in the previous month — found that using mobile payment services such as PayPal, Google Wallet, and MasterCard PayPass isn't specific to any one demographic.
That could be a sign that use of mobile wallets is nearing an inflection point. That would be good news for proponents who have been waiting for the market to develop.
Verizon FiOS Goes Symmetrical: No Extra Cost
Though some will complain, Verizon is making an important change to its FiOS service, namely making all services, at all speeds, symmetrical, at no extra cost.
The expected complaints will take the form of "it's still not good enough."
But that's unfair. It's an important and useful improvement.
Verizon, which is seeing much higher take rates for faster access services, also seems to believe symmetrical bandwidth now is increasingly important to a growing percentage of customers.
Verizon now says 40 percent of FiOS Internet customers buy services at 50 Mbps or faster.
Verizon says it will "transition qualifying current residential customers to higher upload speeds for free throughout the coming months."
Existing and new FiOS small-business customers also will receive this upgrade later in the year.
The level of upload activity on the FiOS network is expected to double by late 2016 and to continue to grow from there, according to Verizon's projections.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Will Voice Drop to Third Among Top Telco Revenue Sources?
It is a sign of how much has changed in the telecom business that voice might soon be the third largest revenue contributor, not the biggest.
Friday, July 18, 2014
When 80% of Work Can be Done on a Tablet
IBM, Accenture, Salesforce.com and Worday are among enterprise technology suppliers working to help big firms create mobile apps that complement or replace PC programs.
The success of such programs in many cases will depend on the type of work tasks conducted by people.
One might argue that a CEO could, as Apple CEO Tim Cook claims, do 80 percent of all his work on an iPad. In part, that is because most of what CEOs at large firms do is communicate with people and review content. They rarely have to create such content, which might require a PC.
Conversely, field service and sales forces also likely can use tablets and smartphones to conduct most of their computing-related or app-related work. Some customer service reps might also be able to do so.
Many sales professionals in the field likewise might be able to do so.
Though some say tablets will be used, more frequently, to create content, not simply interact with it, at the moment it remains the case that jobs where existing content needs to be retrieved or viewed, with simple transactional operations, are best suited to replacement of PCs with tablets or smartphones.
That especially is true for "in the field" apps and operations.
Will AI Disrupt Non-Tangible Products and Industries as Much as the Internet Did?
Most digital and non-tangible product markets were disrupted by the internet, and might be further disrupted by artificial intelligence as w...
-
We have all repeatedly seen comparisons of equity value of hyperscale app providers compared to the value of connectivity providers, which s...
-
It really is surprising how often a Pareto distribution--the “80/20 rule--appears in business life, or in life, generally. Basically, the...
-
Who gets to use spectrum, and concerns about interference from other users, now appears to be an issue for Google’s Project Loon in India. ...