Andrew Burger

Pay-TV operators will be the primary directors of set-top box (STB) standardization and technological development, according to a new report from ABI Research, with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and semiconductor companies playing supporting roles.

Bigger than ever as a result of mergers and acquisitions, pay-TV operators, ABI says, “are at the top of the set-top box food chain.

“The largest operators are responsible for the functional definition and direction, and have significant ownership over at least the logical layers of the implementation. Multi-source supply agreements, in which operators purchase functionally equivalent units from multiple vendors, are the norm today.”

Recent mega mergers will drive homogenization of STBs across larger markets, according to ABI. “The current large scale pay-TV operators we are seeing, including Comcast-Time Warner, AT&T-DirecTV, and Liberty Global’s acquisition of Virgin Media and Ziggo, will in the long term better align set-top box requirements across larger markets,” Sam Rosen, ABI Research practice director, was quoted in a press release.

Retailers and other consumer-facing businesses are seeing the benefits of offering complimentary, so-called amenity Wi-Fi, according to a market research report from Devicescape.

Results of a survey of over “400 small, consumer-facing businesses across the US” offering complimentary Wi-Fi showed improvements in foot traffic, time on premises and customer spending, among other key metrics, according to a Devicescape news release.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents (62 percent) said that since they had introduced complimentary Wi-Fi, customers spent more time on the premises. Half said that they saw increased spending by customers using free Wi-Fi. Just 0.1 percent reported a reduction. Over three-quarters (77 percent) of respondents rated complimentary Wi-Fi as either “important” or “very important” to their businesses.

“Many,” Devicescape points out, “described it as a competitive requirement.” The survey revealed high success rates of complimentary Wi-Fi, though goals associated with introducing it varied among businesses.

Offloading of cellular network traffic to Wi-Fi networks is on the rise, with Wi-Fi offloading now taking place in nearly 80 percent of all US states in 1Q 2014, a 2-3 percent sequential quarterly increase, according to the latest “Quarterly WiFi Analytics Report” from Wi-Fi network management vendor Wefi.

As Wefi highlights in a press release:

• Most states, with the exception of Connecticut and Florida, averaged above 92 percent in Wi-Fi offloading.
• Wi-Fi offloading increased by 90 percent from 4 states in the first quarter of 2013 to 41 states in the first quarter of 2014 -- with an average of 94 percent Wi-Fi offloading in these 41 states.
• In the first quarter of 2014, Wefi found Snapchat speeds blew past Facebook on every metric, including per state and in-state comparisons. For example, in Manhattan, users of Snapchat experienced a nearly 106 percent increase in Mbps whereas Facebook user speeds fell by nearly 81 percent.

Drilling down into the data, Wefi found that streaming video and social media apps, such as Netflix, Vine, Spotify, ESPN and Instagram account for the highest volumes of data use. Better performance “coupled with devices that automatically sense and log users into Wi-Fi networks when they are present,” is leading carriers to offload growing volumes of data on to Wi-Fi networks, a growth trend Wefi sees continuing nationwide.

Wireless network operators are turning to multiple in-multiple out (MIMO) Wi-Fi technology to cope with a “deluge of data traffic generated by smartphones,” according to a report from IHS Technology.

Employing multiple antennae at wireless networks’ transmitter and receiver ends, wireless carriers are using next-generation 802.11 2×2 MIMO Wi-Fi equipment to offload cellular traffic and enhance network throughput. With worldwide unit shipments of smartphones having surpassed 1 billion in 2013 and expected to nearly double to 1.9 billion in 2018, IHS sees “massive” opportunity for growth in the MIMO Wi-Fi market given the early state of adoption. Furthermore, IHS notes in a company press release, “96 percent of all mobile handsets in 2018 will support Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.”

Real, potential or undiscovered, security threats posed by rapidly growing machine-to-machine (M2M) connections and the emerging Internet of Things are troubling IT administrators, according to a research report from GFI Software.

Threats to the rapidly increasing number of Internet-enabled addressable mobile devices on their networks in particular are weighing on their minds.

Commissioning Opinion Matters to survey over 200 US IT decision makers working for organizations with as many as 250 people, GFI Software found that besides opportunities, IoT “means growing security threats, greater device management challenges and increased costs for IT management” for small- and medium-sized US businesses (SMBs). Gartner Research forecasts that the number of “things,” i.e. devices connected to the Internet will surge rapidly higher, with 26 billion addressable devices connected to corporate networks by 2020. That, GFI says, “will create billions of new unsecured endpoints that will in turn produce new vectors of attack designed to either compromise the device or gain access to the infrastructure.”

According to its research survey, 96.5 percent of IT decision makers said IoT would have at least some negative impact on their organizations. More than half (55 percent) believe it will result in new security threats and extend existing threats to a greater number of devices. Furthermore, 30 percent expect IoT to increase IT spending. Over one-quarter (26.7 percent) said device management “will spiral out of control” due to the rise of IoT. Fourteen percent said that deploying patches across multiple platforms will pose a particular challenge.

We can text or email, but a phone call remains by far the preferred form of communication for Americans, especially when a special moment or event is the motivation, according to results of a new survey conducted for Vonage by ORC International.

Fifty-six percent of US adults said they prefer a phone call when asked what type of communication they use most. Texting, chosen by 25 percent, was a distant second. And despite the fact that millennials (18-34 year-olds) text more than they call, 67 percent “stop texting and start calling when it comes to sharing special moments,” Vonage highlights.

With machine-to-machine (M2M) services, aka the Internet of Things, “now scaling to be a significant business” for a growing number of telecom and Internet service providers, Infonetics on May 14 released the results of a global survey of M2M service providers’ market expectations and strategies.

With each providing at least 1 million M2M connections to customers, M2M is a “sizable” business for over half the 20 service providers Infonetics surveyed for its “M2M Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey.” Collectively, businesses in the automotive/transport/logistics and utility sectors account for nearly half, Infonetics states in a news release.

“Service provider focus and prioritization of the M2M segment has been a relatively recent phenomenon, but as our latest M2M service provider survey shows, M2M is now scaling to be a significant business for a good number of providers around the world,” Infonetics’ Godfrey Chua, directing analyst for M2M and The Internet of Things, was quoted as saying.

Canadian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are now among those rated by Netflix for speed and performance, and hence their ability to “provide the best prime time Netflix streaming experience.”

Bell Canada and Bell Alliant’s fiber optic network services, at an average 3.19 and 3.10 Mbps respectively, ranked highest among Canadian ISPs in the April edition of the monthly Netflix ISP Speed Index. Following closely in third was cable provider Shaw with an average bandwidth of 3.00.

As a country, average Netflix performance speeds in Canada beat those of US ISPs but ranked below those of most European nations, Netflix elaborates in a post on its “US and Canada” blog.

Cablevision, at an average 3.00 Mbps, rated tops in the US in Netflix’s April “USA ISP Speed Index,” followed by Cox at 2.90 and Comcast at 2.77.

In a new report, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) forecasts app usage will continue to increase through 2014, as US households download a greater number of apps to smartphones, tablets and smart TVs, among other devices.

Each app-enabled device category evaluated by CEA in its “16th Annual CE Ownership and Market Potential Study” registered year-over-year growth in the first part of 2014. Gaining at least six percentage points in app-ownership over 2013, smartphones, tablets and smart TVs were the fastest growing device categories, according to a CEA news release.

There were over 1 million apps on both Apple and Google Android’s app markets at the beginning of 2014. Generally speaking, app users are interested in apps that have compatibility across a range of devices (61 percent), and a high level of functionality, such as the ability to control other devices (52 percent), CEA found. Two-thirds (67 percent) said they enjoy using apps, 59 percent said the number of apps available is overwhelming. Less than half (46 percent) of respondents agreed that apps “remove the need to purchase separate electronic devices.”

As much as they like using them, consumers don’t like to pay for apps. Just one-third (32 percent) of those surveyed said they are willing to pay for apps.

Obtaining a good, strong cellular mobile connection inside homes anywhere in the world can be a challenge. Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones may offer a readily available solution, according to the results of a global consumer survey released by mobile industry telecommunications over-the-top solutions provider Kineto Wireless.

Kineto found that 89 percent of respondents who said they had “poor-to-no mobile voice coverage at home” also owned Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. The Kineto-sponsored survey also found:

1. 12 percent of all respondents classified mobile voice coverage within their home as poor (e.g. dead spots within their home) to non-existent
2. 25 percent of all respondents indicated they had switched mobile service providers due to a home coverage issue
3. In the US, 87% of respondents with poor to no mobile voice coverage at home indicated they were smartphone users that regularly connect their phone to a home Wi-Fi network. That same number was 89% in the UK and 84% across Asia.