The inevitable movement to tiered pricing which started with Verizon Wireless acknowledging its plans to do so for LTE and has been accelerated with the much anticipated data plan announcement by AT&T this week.  So, what next?

• Will we see significant priced based competition for mobile data among the top US operators?
• Will we see significant movement in share of adds for AT&T as iPhone wannabees are tempted by a plan of only $15?
• What impact will lower data plans for smartphones have on AT&T’s Quick Messaging Devices and Verizon Wireless equivalent?
• How long before we see family data plans and shared usage across multiple devices?

The move by AT&T is a smart play to extend the smartphone momentum as the low hanging fruit of Apple aficionados, multimedia techies and style seekers willing to pay top dollar has been significantly penetrated.

There is no doubt that the iPhone remains the coolest device on the marketplace and the end to end user experience remains easily the best in class. So, reducing the TCO to attract the next 20% of customers to a paid data plans while educating customers about data usage levels and managing the traffic risk is very smart business in my opinion.

The lower price points will help AT&T maintain its current leading share of smartphone users and may be attractive to casual social networkers

• Although the 50 photos allowance is not exactly generous! For casual messenger, and social network status checking and moderate email the new DataPlus plan is quite attractive overall and will likely attract a portion of customers who would otherwise opt for a Quick Messaging Device from AT&T or a competitive offering from Verizon Wireless.

I do expect to see some modest price competition among the big operators

• with T-Mobile most likely to drive prices lower given their need for scale and to protect their predominantly youth centric customer base. but also expect an increasingly strong Verizon Wireless handset line up to compete strongly.

The impact on Quick Messaging Devices is in my opinion likely to be modest

• as a traditional qwerty remains overwhelmingly the input of choice for heavy messengers in the US although there is definitely room for lowering the $10 mandatory data plan on featurephones

Family data plans and data plans which allow access across multiple devices are in the pipeline

• but will probably not make an appearance until 2012+ as part of LTE offerings.

From a device vendor perspective, the move to lower priced iPhone plans is likely to put further pressure on vendors like LG who have yet to make a credible offer in this space as well as RIM who will find more competition in the consumer space.

The lower pricing on data plans will be music to the ears of ambitious new entrants like Huawei, ZTE who plan to bring mass market priced devices to the US & Europe. The lower TCO of smartphones as a result of downward pressure on service prices boost their addressable market.

Throttle or Choke.‘Net Neutrality’ proponents argue that there should be no restrictions by service providers on any type of end-user access to content, equipment or modes of communication but in April a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC had exceeded its authority when it told Comcast not to ‘throttle’ BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer video exchange and related applications - even though BitTorrent was ‘choking’ performance for other Comcast users. FCC is now proposing additional regulation and Congress is getting in on the act. Lurking behind the partisan rhetoric of ‘Net neutrality’ are serious issues. It is time to deal with them. Issue 1. Harm to the Network. Ironically Comcast was trying to protect its customers from ‘harm to the network’ as the Communications Act requires. Many service providers - including many mobile operators - are struggling to manage the disproportionate traffic demands of a few heavy duty users whose peer-to-peer or high bandwidth applications slow down performance for everyone else. Solution: Some equitable form of network management is not only reasonable but essential for the broadband networks to function. Issue 2. Service Quality at a Fair Price. Insistence by ‘Net Neutrality’ advocates that everyone get the same access with the same ‘class of service’ leads rapidly to a lowest common denominator for all. When video ‘bandwidth hogs’ block more time sensitive or more valuable, low bandwidth applications there is a good case for throughput guarantees. Solution: In both fixed and mobile broadband markets, tiered classes of service for different user applications with different bandwidth requirements and different priorities at different prices will enable operators to balance broadband traffic demand with new capacity expansion. Issue 3. Exclusive Walled Gardens. The owners of broadband access have been tempted recently to consider exclusive deals with preferred application and content providers – like Google and YouTube. Often there are only one or two access providers, so small new or innovative vendors are concerned they will be relegated to a lower class of service. This is not just a US issue. In April European Union telecoms commissioner Neelie Kroes suggested that “users should be able to access and distribute the content, services and applications they want”…”Nor should telecommunications providers be allowed to block services provided by direct competitors.” Solution: Toll highway operators should not choose the customers’ automobiles. Nor should the automobile companies pay the user tolls in advance for the fastest highways. A primary reason for communications regulation is to prevent access providers from extending their power to control access to limit content choice or overcharge for services. Networks need a clear and neutral boundary between transport and applications so that choices are separate and made by end users. Let’s deal with the real challenges to delivering broadband for all - instead of firing political rhetoric at one another

 

May you live in interesting times as the old Chinese proverb goes. Well in the information, communication and entertainment industry we certainly do. Some very interesting questions face our industry whether we look at:

• the outcome of much delayed Indian 3G auction or
• the battlegrounds around HSPA+ and LTE or
• the surging Android ecosystem vs. weakening Symbian or
• the upside potential for WebOS under it new owners
• the potential disruption caused by mobile cloud phones and device

Every major technology advancement has lead to a massive disruption in the handset and infrastructure vendor community.

• In 3G, Motorola’s slim myopia led to its near ruin and has provided huge growth for Samsung and a foothold in international markets for LG and SEMC.
• On the infrastructure side 3G was expertly grasped by Huawei and ZTE leading to a new wave of M & A and a new world order which counts Nortel as a victim and seriously challenges ALU.

So how will the migration to 4G change the playing field?

• Who will benefit most on the operator/service provider side?
• Will Cloud Phones be disruptive in LTE?
• Will operators find a path to realign the traffic/revenue mix with mobile broadband devices?

I would welcome your thoughts on these key questions. Also don’t forget to join our client webinar on Thursday May 27.

 

David

The bids in Germany’s current spectrum auctions are starting to add up. With a range of spectrum on the table (800MHz, 1800MHz, 2GHz and 2.6GHz), it is the digital dividend 800MHz spectrum that is dominating proceedings – at the end of round 94 the bids totalled €1.9 billion, with nearly 90% of this bid on the 800MHz spectrum. Although there is still some way to go, the auction is already pricing the 800MHz spectrum at more than 30x higher than the 2.6GHz spectrum. The need for denser LTE networks in higher frequency bands will come, but for now 800MHz is much more valuable as it is the most cost effective for delivery of next generation coverage. However, in this instance the government isn’t leaving that to chance as it strives to close the broadband coverage gap in rural areas. Winning bidders have to cover smaller towns before they can move on to larger cities. That is a nice touch by the government. The next few years of spectrum auctions in Europe are unlikely to raise the kind of sums seen in the 2.1GHz 3G auctions of 1999-2001. So getting some public good (other than money for the public purse) out of the auctions makes sense. Building in licence rules to make sure 800MHz spectrum really is used to close the digital divide is logical as 3G/4G mobile broadband adoption soars. So if you live in a rural community that has yet to be touched by DSL/cable and are fed up waiting for a decent 3G mobile broadband signal, the sale of 800MHz spectrum for mobile services and they way coverage is being prioritized in the legislation is good news (provided you can wait a little longer for the spectrum to be cleared of analogue TV). But for the rest of the population in Germany at least, this is probably all very dull. There are only four bidders in this auction (the four existing mobile operators), so it will do nothing for competition and probably nothing for pricing either. Many operators we speak to have a similar view to TeliaSonera and will position LTE as a premium mobile broadband product as they try to pull back from what has often been quite intensive price competition in this fledgling sector.

Returning from CTIA in Las Vegas last week and with only 2 days before going off on vacation to Florida, I found myself reflecting that two of the most interesting meetings I had at the show were with mobile operators.

During CTIA I spent some time with AT&T emerging devices and T-Mobile M2M teams and was impressed with how both these units had managed to cut (or at least untie) the cord to the mother ship and avoid having innovation stifled by the Borg up at Corporate.

• AT&T’s efforts to encourage a broad range of new applications and devices has definitely paid dividends with Mr. Lurie and his team adding an impressive 1M users in Q409 as a result of new device categories (mostly PND and EBR).
• T-Mobile revealed a somewhat unheralded pedigree in M2M.

Partnership is the order of the day.

AT&T highlighted partner applications ranging from location enabled pet collars (Apisphere) to glow cap bottles to aid compliance with medication schedules (Vitality) to a very cool new tablet from Openpeak which is very different to the announced but apparently supply side challenged iPad.  Verizon Wireless and Sprint are of course also praying at the alter of open development but perhaps with less public presence.

When I think of enterprise mobility, AT&T and Verizon Wireless are top of mind but T-Mobile has in fact quietly been developing strong competency in the M2M space over the last 7-8 years.

T-Mobile offers four different SIM form factors to suit specific applications and have enjoyed triple digit growth for the last four years. T-Mobile US has quietly activated “hundreds” of different device types on its network with only a handful of devices being rejected or pulled due to network unfriendly characteristics. These devices span Telematics, Connected Energy, Telemedicine and several other applications.

So what is the common DNA of two very different operators that has allowed them to innovate and focus on new opportunities? Separation and operational autonomy to facilitate and open funnel approach to partners and speed of execution not normally associated with US carriers.

In the case of AT&T, the Emerging Devices group was chartered with developing a new space and freed from the legacy of voice & data consumer tariffs and prepaid/postpaid categories which just don’t cut it in the new connected reality where users will have multiple devices connected but used in very different ways. Mr. Lurie and his team have been able to streamline device certification and experiment across the spectrum of business models for new connected applications.

For T-Mobile, speed of certification (days not months) and the independence of being a self-contained unit (own engineers, own sales although linked to broader enterprise group) reporting to Finance & Strategy have allowed them to pursue their “easiest to do business with” approach to the M2M markets.

So, the takeaway? Innovation is alive and well at US operators but separation from the collective corporate mind is essential.

David Kerr

Newton MA.USA. The size and bureaucratic tone of the FCC’ s ‘Connecting America :The National Broadband Plan’ conceal some exciting implications for broadband wireless. So here is the crib sheet.The new pro-active US Federal Communications Commission has decided to follow the example of other industrialized countries - that have been aggressively promoting Broadband - and has proposed a Broadband Availability Target (BAT) for every household and business location in America to have access to affordable broadband service with download speeds of at least 4 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 1 Mbps with good quality of service. 14 million people in US today do not have access to a terrestrial broadband infrastructure capable of meeting the BAT. FCC projected potential broadband revenues from these 14 million people and subtracted the required capital expenditures and ongoing costs for terrestrial fixed broadband. The difference is the Broadband Availability Gap (BAG) which has a 2010 present value of $24 Billion. “The gap is greatest in areas with low population density” where, the FCC says “service providers .. cannot earn enough revenue to cover the costs of deploying and operating broadband networks, including expected returns on capital… there is no business case to offer broadband services in these areas.” So what role does the FCC assign to broadband wireless to help fill this gap? FCC notes that as of November 2009 3G service covered only roughly 60% of U.S. land mass. And although FCC politely questions the spectral efficiency and services of current Fixed Wireless technology and timing of 4G wireless it boldly announced new plans to: Make 500 MHz newly available for broadband use in 10 years, of which 300 MHz is for mobile use within 5 years as follows:

• 20 MHz for mobile broadband use in the 2.3 GHz WCS band • 10 MHz Upper 700 MHz D Block for commercial use compatible with public safety broadband services • 60 MHz in AWS bands • 90 MHz of Mobile Satellite Spectrum (MSS) for terrestrial use • 120 MHz reallocated with compensation from the broadcast bands television (TV).

And the FCC recommends allocating funds for the plan in stages as follows:

Stage 1: 2010–2011 - FCC will establish Connect America Fund (CAF) to support the provision of affordable fixed broadband and will begin to switch up to $15.5 billion from the Universal Service Fund(USF) to CAF. CAF funding is planned to be “technology and carrier neutral”. FCC will also establish new Mobility Fund for specific locations that are lagging significantly behind in 3G wireless coverage (and to establish) the basis for the future footprint of 4G mobile broadband networks. Stage 2: 2012–2016 - FCC will assign approximately $4 billion from Inter-Carrier Compensation (ICC) reforms and CAF to Mobility Fund and related activities. FCC will also provide funding of up to $6.5 billion to support deployment of a nationwide, interoperable Public Safety mobile broadband network. Fixed wireless broadband will compete with terrestrial broadband for CAF funding.

Our recent TRS report ‘Gambling on Telco Returns - Telco CAPEX and Risk in Six Countries’ calculated that today fixed broadband capital investment cost per subscriber in the US, is approximately $250. This compares to approximately $70 per subscriber for today’s wireless networks and potentially twice that for 3G+ or 4G. Wireless broadband is likely to require significantly less FCC subsidy than terrestrial broadband to fill the FCC’s ‘Broadband Gap’, especially in the underserved low density rural areas of the US. Tariff and Revenue Strategy Service analyzes how service providers can balance their fixed and mobile broadband capital expenditures and price new broadband services to achieve profitable ubiquitous operations. Sue Rudd, Director Tariff & Revenue Strategies – srudd@strategyanalytics.com

March 3^rd. 2010, Newton MA. USA Tariff and Revenue Strategy(TRS) service looks at the financial outlook for service providers in 2010 and 2011.  Although growth will be slow, TRS expects telecommunications to outpace the economy. The glass is definitely ‘half-full’. Real US growth is beginning to come from the manufacturing sector. US Federal Reserve has announced that January 2010 was the 7^th. consecutive month of US manufacturing growth. Output of business equipment rose 0.9 percent in January, and information processing equipment increased 1.7 percent. In UK today’s strong service sector report is stimulating talk of positive first quarter GDP growth; and the February US numbers show stronger than expected service sector growth and continued manufacturing expansion. For the telecommunications sector in 2010 the substitution of telecommunications for travel and of messaging and email for business transactions should continue to increase penetration as a percent of overall industry activity. Because telecommunications increases labor productivity it will continue to outpace the slow economic recovery, even if there is little job growth. Slowing rate of job losses has not been great news – though this is exactly how things look just before the economy turns up . Think ‘sine wave’ and ‘positive first derivative’. The slow recovery is not slow enough however, to totally depress Communications Investment. Capital expenditures (CAPEX) for telecommunications equipment and network deployment are expected to recover significantly in 2010, even if the level may not get back above that of 2008. Even as operators are laying off thousands of employees to improve competitive efficiency, they are optimistic enough to announce significant 2010 CAPEX for broadband telecom (fixed and mobile) over the next 18 months. These operators expect next generation IP based infrastructure to leverage the hardware volume of the information industry and lower their overall cost of operations. BTW: It is hard to quantify the exact impact of these savings on operator financials – but TRS is working on it. In 2010 and 2011 we expect that mobile broadband and IP based infrastructure will have the performance to begin to fill the ‘Broadband Gap’.  Mobile Broadband at 2- 20 MBps may actually be the cheaper, better way to deploy broadband services in rural and low density areas around the world. This infrastructure deployment will itself stimulate further economic growth. As April comes and the weather improves the glass may very slowly start getting fuller. Sue Rudd - srudd@strategyanalytics.com

We are currently updating Q4 operational/financial data in our Wireless Operator Performance Benchmarking research, with the last 7 days seeing a large number of operators report results. There are two over-riding themes coming out of the results so far. Firstly, for most operators Q4 was better than Q3, which is great news. The slight problem is that this is better in the sense of “less worse”. If you get mugged two days in a row, the chances are the mugger will get less off you on the second day – you probably haven’t got a new phone and your spare wallet won’t have all your replacement cards/ID in it yet. So that’s obviously a much better mugging. So the fact that revenues and profits didn’t fall as fast in Q4 as they did in Q3 is equally good, right? Secondly, “relentless” cost control / management is a standard item in strategic directions for 2010. A few operators are predicting flat EBITDA for this year, many are expecting moderate single-digit declines. Mobile data remains the growth engine, but falling revenues from voice/termination/roaming will be hard to overcome. So its cost control that will save operator profitability in 2010: distribution mixes and device subsidies seem to be key items up for debate in most mature markets. I worry for an operator recovery in 2010. The recession will be officially over (it already is in many countries), but unemployment will increase, few workers will be banking on pay rises, private consumption will lag GDP growth (which is itself a real mixed bag across different countries), and governments will push through austere budgets. Plus everyone who put off upgrading their handset last year will want to do it this year, so we will see a higher share of mobile spend diverted to device vendors. Depressed yet? The debt crisis in Greece is perhaps a worst case scenario, though I’ll leave you with this sobering quote from OTE’s results last week: “In 2010, the OTE Group expects its revenue base to be further impacted by difficult economic conditions in all markets, lower consumer spending, intense competition, and regulatory constraints on its capacity to respond effectively to these factors. OTE management … will work hard to minimize revenue shrinkage and defend Group profitability.” OTE will not be the only operator to get mugged again in 2010. Phil Kendall

Softbank Japan will be switching off its 2G mobile network next month, one of the first WCDMA operators in the world to do so. In its financial results on Tuesday it said this would result in a small correction in subscriber numbers, though the revenue impact will be minimal - in Q4 2009, 3.6% of its customers were still on the 2G network, but they contributed just 1.7% of revenues. More importantly, terminating the 2G network is going to contribute to profit growth, so it’s all good news. For Softbank, that is. That’s just over eight years to move from launching a 3G network to closing down the 2G network. Unfortunately, no other operator is going to be running on those timelines, even NTT DoCoMo is going to see 10 years lapse between its 3G launch and 2G closure (down for March 2011).

• Many operators in developed economies are now 6-7 years into their 3G lives and nowhere near the subscriber/revenue ratios seen in Japan in that timescale – most have yet to even get 40% of their subscribers onto 3G.

We spend a large amount of time in our forecast models looking at adoption curves for new technologies, predicting an inflection point for LTE is the latest to tax us. I have just run a speed test on my HTC Hero and (with the wind blowing in the right direction) I am getting 3Mbps down and almost 1Mbps up on a 7.2Mbps HSPA network. It’s hard to sit here today and decide at what point in the future I am going to find that performance completely unacceptable. New technologies are fun, but what is equally interesting for us is looking at the other end of the technology life cycle:

• How should mobile operators manage the retirement of legacy technologies as they transition from 2G to 3G, or from circuit to packet voice?
• At what point is it worth investing more in 3G subsidies for 2G users in order to save money by shutting down the old network?

The analogue to digital switch-over involved migrating a peak of 93 million analogue connections and even that has taken well over a decade to complete – this time around, there will be 4 billion 2G connections to migrate. While Softbank looks forward to lower network operating costs from April, very few other operators will reach that point even by 2015. We see huge promise in LTE and other mobile broadband technologies attracting users away from 2G services, but as vendors fight it out to have the fastest 4G demo at MWC this year it will be interesting to see how much space is devoted to technology co-existence. As regulators move towards technology-agnostic spectrum licensing, there will be a real skill in managing resources across 2G, 3G and 4G technologies and great opportunities for vendors to help operators make the transition away from 2G as painless as possible. Phil Kendall

Afte the inevitable wave of irrational exuberance has come the equally inevitable correction and flow of negative comments regarding Google Nexus One.

• We are now seeing a huge rebound of criticisms about customer service, implementation and execution, moaning and complaining for existing t-mobile customers who have to pay more than a new customer to get a cool device and strong complaints from developers about availability of SDK and support.
•  Naturally, the questions about Google's ability to execute on direct sales are being raised but these shall pass very quickly in our view.

Within our wireless team we had divergent opinions from network centric, application focussed and device driven analysts but ultimatlely we arrived at the following key perspectives:

• Consensus is that Nexus will be successful by high end tier Smartphone levels (single digit volumes in 2010 but upside potential when it rolls out beyond TMO in US and to more open markets in Europe). Nexus is likely to sell more through operator channels than direct overall. Handset volume though is not the metric by which Google will measure Nexus success nor should operators as Nexus sales are a means to an end.  If Google is successful and Nexus ends up driving usage and value for operators, they will support it with subsidies.  Otherwise, operators can passively watch Google evolve its own-branded offering with little to lose. Tier One handset vendors (SAM, LG) may have the most to lose as Google’s marketing muscle and brand coupled with compelling devices and experiences will be a strong competitor for Operator slots, subsidy dollars.

• Handset revenues and profits are a nice to have for Google. Key to their success and long term ambition is too boost the mobile browsing ecosystem. More open devices capable of browsing/search/maps from Google or others is positive for Google.  Google needed to update and get close to parity in terms of an engaging, fun, easy browsing UI with competitive links to key apps like maps, media etc and this device achieves that goal. Google is great at creating a buzz and the media is ready to talk about something other than Apple.

• Google Nexus and indeed the whole Android approach is not about controlling/owning the user (contrast this with Apple). Google’s key metric is advertising revenue. Google's vision is well publicized: the browser is how they will deliver services, even on mobile, and apps are a stop-gap measure as far as Google's strategic vision is concerned. Google is banking on HTML 5 as their solution to fragmentation but we believe they are drinking too much of their own coolaid here and underestimating the importance of apps. Google’s key goal is to increase eyeballs and advertising.

• Some key elements that have not been addressed which we believe are key in Google’s future evolution and will be key to watch relate to Voice and what Google does its Gizmo5 acquisition to push Google Voice into a full VoIP proposition. This is where Telcos should be most worried and where we have yet to see all the pieces positioned on the battlefiled.