The success of smart phone, in particular the iPhone, is both a blessing and a curse for the mobile operators. On the one hand it has broken into the monopolistic business models used by most operators and has most certainly loosened part of their stranglehold; on the other, these phones have increased usage on their networks. But these cracks are going to continue and will eventually lead to similar structural changes in the mobile industry to the ones we are currently experiencing in the fixed market. more»
40%, not 92%-120%. "Data consumption right now is growing 40% a year," John Stankey of AT&T told investors and his CEO Randall Stephenson confirmed on the investor call. That's far less than the 92% predicted by Cisco's VNI model or the FCC's 120% to 2012 and 90% to 2013 figure in the "spectrum crunch" analysis. AT&T is easily a third of the U.S. mobile Internet and growing market share; there's no reason to think the result will be very different when we have data from others. more»
While it was good to see that the Administration included telecoms in its new stimulus package - which was launched in September 2011 - the concerns expressed when the project was announced last year still persist. Wireless is not a solution to the significant broadband problems the USA is facing. ... The new plan seems to be driven more by the failed attempts in previous initiatives to roll out more broadband infrastructure. more»
U.S. Federal regulators are moving forward with plans to put two valuable chunks of airwaves up for sale, despite market turmoil that could make it difficult for potential bidders to raise necessary financing, report the Wall Street Journal today. "Today, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to release draft rules for the re-auction of airwaves that would be used to create networks that allow fire, police and other emergency services to communicate more effectively. The idea, pushed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, faltered earlier this year when the first effort to sell airwaves attracted no winning bids. Potential bidders were concerned about onerous conditions required of the winner. This time, the FCC is considering relaxing some of those conditions, including cutting the minimum bid to $750 million from $1.3 billion." more»
I regularly bring this issue forward, similar to the discussion in relation to the structural separation of the fixed networks, which I began just over a decade ago. What we are seeing in the mobile industry is an infrastructure and a spectrum crunch. The amount of spectrum needed to satisfy people's demand from mobile phones, tablets and soon a range of other smart devices is limitless. Mobile carriers are scrambling for spectrum... more»
In a move to be celebrated by many of us with a VoIP background, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced today the appointment of Henning Schulzrinne as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As the release indicates, Henning's role as CTO will be to: ...guide the FCC's work on technology and engineering issues, together with the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology. more»
If you missed attending or listening to the live stream of the US Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) workshop on the transition of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to new technologies that was held last week on December 6th, the FCC has very nicely made a video recording available from their website for viewing... FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski also appeared briefly to provide a few comments. more»
Aircell, the company that provides the new Gogo Internet service on some American Airlines flights, is reported to be signing another airline to its service. Aircell management expects there will be some 2,000 commercial airplanes offering Gogo by the end of next year... "American Airlines has installed Gogo on 15 airplanes for flights between New York and Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco, and Delta says it'll have Gogo available across its domestic fleet of 330 commercial jets within a year. Delta is expected to expand that service to Northwest Airlines flights if the merger of those two companies goes through as planned..." more»
China continues to add broadband subscribers at a rate of about 30M per year. MIIT puts the January growth at 2.5M to a total of 152.5M. Of those, about 1.5M were DSL. They don't release fiber counts, but Jeff Heynen of Infonetics is reporting tens of millions of lines of fiber gear are in the pipeline. China has been consistently at 2-3M net adds per month. Two key policy moves are likely to maintain or even increase the growth rate. more»
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Saturday it was canceling a December 18 meeting in response to a request by Democratic lawmakers that it pay more attention to a smooth transition to digital television early next year. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Rep. Henry Waxman of California wrote FCC Chairman Kevin Martin on Friday asking him to hold off on other FCC business to focus on the mandatory switch to digital television signals due in February. more»
As handheld devices grow ever more sophisticated and demand for content-rich services such as mobile video increases, mobile data traffic is likely to continue growing at an explosive rate. This represents good news for the industry, but next-generation wireless technologies will need to be ready to meet the challenge and able to cope with these increased demands on bandwidth. A recent TD-LTE spectrum workshop looked at the potential of TD-LTE technology to take us on to the next stage of wireless communication. more»
China Telecom Corp. plans to start selling a wireless service to U.S. consumers under its own brand early next year, seeking to sign up Chinese-Americans, students and tourists who travel often between the two countries. China's biggest fixed-line provider will offer users of the service handsets with two lines, one that will work in the U.S. and another in China, Donald Tan, president of China Telecom Americas, said in an interview. more»
Before anyone claims victory for the consumer in AT&T's abandonment of its "swinging for the fence" gambit to buy T-Mobile's market share and spectrum, consider what did not make many headlines this week. Both AT&T and Verizon substantially shored up their spectrum stocks with major deals with Qualcomm and several cable companies respectively. Solid hits for both carriers: not homeruns, but very strategic singles and doubles. more»
The explosion in mobile communications in the developing world has created social and economic changes that have exceeded all expectations and predictions -- even those made as recently as five years ago. There are still countries lagging behind, but now is the time to move on to the next stage -- and that means broadband. Already the developed world is showing an enormous appetite for mobile broadband, so the demand is most certainly there. The rapid development of low cost Smartphone, projected to approach $50 soon... more»
The buzz from vendors and carriers about the broadband wireless technology called mobile WiMAX is heating up, fueled by new chipsets and radio products and fanned by some huge carrier investments, reports Network World. "Clearwire in the summer rounded up $900 million, including $600 million from WiMAX zealot Intel, to upgrade its growing wireless broadband net to support the IEEE's 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard. And Sprint Nextel in August became the first U.S. cellular provider to announce plans to deploy a nationwide mobile WiMAX net in the licensed 2.5GHz frequency band." more»
