Andrew Burger

Envisioning the future of the Internet and its impacts on society and the world we live in, nearly 1,500 experts agree that the Internet will become less visible even as it becomes more central and important in daily life.

And although they believe the ramifications of the Internet’s evolution on society and the larger world will be positive on balance, they also see signs of trouble.

Trends towards ubiquitous Internet access across wireless and wired networks, skyrocketing growth in sensors and machine-to-machine (M2M) network connections, and ever-greater information processing power and capacity foreshadow much of what the consensus of experts surveyed imagine the Internet will look like and the ramifications it will have across societies worldwide in coming years.

The Pew Research Internet Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center compiled the results of their survey of experts into the “Digital Life in 2025” report. In the coming years out to 2025, the research partners summarize, experts believe that the Internet “will become more ‘like electricity’ and produce vastly greater human and machine connectivity that will change everything from personal interactions to the decisions made by governments around the world.”

According to most of the respondents, by 2025 there will be:

• A global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment
• A continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases and massive data centers in a world-spanning information fabric known as the Internet of Things
• Portable/wearable/implantable technologies that will allow people to “augment reality”
• Disruption of business models established in the 20th century, most notably impacting finance, entertainment, publishers of all sorts and education
• Tagging, databasing and intelligent analytical mapping of the physical and social realms

Smartphone pricing is becoming more important to buyers as the smartphone technological playing field has leveled, according to Volume 1 of the JD Power 2014 Wireless Smartphone Satisfaction Study.

Just over one-fifth (21 percent) of smartphone owners cited price as the main reason they chose to purchase a particular smartphone, up from 13 percent in JD Power’s 2011 study.

AT&T ranked tops among US telecompetitors in terms of smartphone-device customer satisfaction, scoring 844 out of a possible 1,000 points.

Sprint ranked second at 839, T-Mobile third at 835, and Verizon Wireless fourth with a score of 829.

Overall satisfaction among smartphone owners totaled 837, according to a JD Power press release, with Apple ranking highest among smartphone original equipment manufacturers among Tier 1 wireless carriers.

High-tech and telecom companies continue to spend ever-greater amounts to win friends and influence people in the US government, hoping to push their agenda, according to the latest analysis of lobbying disclosure forms by Consumer Watchdog.

At $3.82 million and up 14 percent from $3.35 million in the year-ago period, the Google lobbying budget ranked the highest on Consumer Watchdog’s list of the top 15 technology and telecommunications companies in terms of spending on federal government lobbying in 1Q 2014.

Comcast, as it seeks to gain approval for its merger with Time Warner Cable, ranked second, spending $3.09 million on federal lobbying in 1Q. Noting that AT&T and Verizon typically outspend their high-tech counterparts, Consumer Watchdog said AT&T spent $3.67 million and Verizon $3.55 million on lobbying in 1Q.

The vast amounts of money companies are spending to influence federal lawmaking and regulations poses serious threats to American democracy, Consumer Watchdog argues.

“These companies continue to spend whatever they think necessary to buy the laws and regulations they want,” said Consumer Watchdog project director John Simpson. “These disclosure statements don’t include payments to trade associations or the sort of ‘soft’ lobbying that has become a Google trademark -- funds to think tanks and academic research centers. When all that is factored in, the amounts are staggering.”

At its core, building ‘the Internet of Things’ means building machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, and those will nearly triple between 2014 and 2018, with cellular-WAN wireless M2M connections expanding from 220 million to nearly 630 million, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.

With nearly 1.7 billion M2M connections worldwide, revenue for the global market for M2M services totaled just over $16 billion in 2013, according to the research firm’s “M2M Connections and Services by Vertical” report. Infonetics forecasts that will increase at an 18 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2013-2018. Key findings from Infonetics’ report include:

• A growing list of global tier 1 players are supporting more than 10 million M2M connections each;
• M2M “access” services—where operators’ broadband services function as M2M access solutions—make up over 16% of M2M service revenue, around $3 billion;
• 80% of M2M devices in 2013 were connected via personal area network (PAN) technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee
• For technology vendors, it is increasingly important to build networking solutions that take into consideration the architectural requirements of the various M2M use cases that are proliferating, as well as the portfolio of emerging connection technologies.

The number of active mobile broadband devices in Americans’ hands will increase 50 percent to 34 million by year-end 2015, and two-thirds of them will be tablets, according to new market research from The NPD Group.

Today, tablets account for 40 percent of mobile broadband connections. Carriers will have to boost adoption of connected tablets as use of mobile hotspots and USB sticks decline. With the shift, the price of embedded cellular tablets should decline rapidly, according to NPD’s “Connected Intelligence Mobile Broadband Market Share and Forecast Report.”

“Tablets are the next subscriber battleground for the carriers,” NPD director, Connected Intelligence Brad Akyuz was quoted as saying. “The decline in ASPs [application service providers], coupled with the intensified pricing competition, will further boost connected tablet adoption in the coming years.

The rapid emergence of over-the-top (OTT) and Internet TV alternatives, as well as cloud services, has posed stiff challenges for US pay-TV service providers in recent years.

Having experienced a 0.58% decline in subscriber numbers in 2013, the pay-TV subscriber base will grow in 2014, albeit at a tepid pace, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics. Pay-TV subscriber numbers will increase 0.14% in 2014, Strategy Analytics forecasts in its “North America Digital Television Forecast: 1Q 2014.” IPTV “will be the bright spot” in the pay-TV market, with subscriptions rising 17.5% year-over-year. The growth will continue, the market research company continues, with US pay-TV’s IPTV subscriber numbers increasing at an 8.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2019.

The two leading US IPTV providers -- AT&T and Verizon -- “are approaching the future with different strategies, but both are focused on driving advanced services and multiplay bundles with digital television and high-speed Internet at the core of their packages,” Strategy Analytics notes. Turning to cable pay-TV providers, the rollout of the Xfinity X1 platform has reversed a downtrend in Comcast’s subscriber base.

Viewing TV programming over the Internet is growing, as is demand for more devices and more online content. And consumers are increasingly willing to pay for better access to content, which is reshaping the landscape of the media and entertainment industries, according to the fourth annual multinational “Accenture Digital Consumer Survey.”

Accenture surveyed 23,000 consumers in 23 countries. According to Accenture’s findings, 25 percent of respondents indicated the intention to purchase a connected TV over the next 12 months. Another 11 percent said they intend to replace an existing connected TV, and 12 percent said they plan to purchase a tablet, “expanding the market of addressable screens even further,” Accenture highlights in a press release.

“If consumers act on these intentions, it will represent remarkable growth in the addressable market for online video,” Gavin Mann, Accenture’s global broadcast industry lead, was quoted as saying. “This rapid digital expansion is fostering a new era of personalized TV experiences with the number of video-centric connected devices predicted to surpass the world’s population by 2017.”

Nearly half (44 percent) of all respondents are watching full-length movies and TV shows over the Internet daily, while 39 percent are doing so weekly, Accenture’s research reveals. That’s despite 86 percent reporting streaming interruptions and 71 percent noting considerable slowdowns in viewing. Accenture also found that consumers would prefer seamless bundling of their online video services. That was expressed when they selected Google, Apple and Samsung, in that order, as a preferred non-traditional broadcaster capable of delivering Pay-TV, VOD and Catch-up TV even though those aren’t core capacities of any of those companies at present, Accenture noted.

The fastest growing segment of the online video market, mobile video, may make up half of all online video content consumed by 2016, Ooyala highlights in its “Global Video Index, Q4 2013” report.

The amount of time viewers spent watching online video on tablets and mobile devices has skyrocketed 719 percent since 4Q 2011 and 160 percent year over year since 4Q 2012. Combined, mobile devices and tablets accounted for 18 percent of online video time spent in October and reached over 26 percent as of end-December, a rise of 43 percent, according to the executive summary of Ooyala’s latest report.

The stellar success of mobile online video, Ooyala states in a press release, “validates the opportunity for broadcasters to build and monetize cross-device experiences, and for advertisers to reach more audiences as mobile and tablet viewers multiply.”

Pay-TV providers are missing the mark when it comes to the features and functionality current digital video network technology offers, according to the latest quarterly report on media and entertainment industry trends from TiVo’s Digitalsmiths.

Over one in ten respondents (10.8%) to Digitalsmiths’ latest quarterly consumer survey could potentially leave their current cable or satellite pay-TV service provider over the next six months, researchers found. 6.7% said they plan to change providers over this period, while 4.2% said they plan to cut their service altogether or switch to a third-party app, according to Digitalsmiths’, “Q4 2013 Video Trends Report.” Added to this, another 32.1% can be considered “on-the-fence,” indicating “maybe” when asked if they intended to change or switch providers or cut their current pay-TV service, which brings to 43% the percentage who “could be considered ‘at-risk’ subscribers,” Digitalsmiths notes. Other key takeaways from Digitalsmiths’ latest quarterly report include:

• Almost one-third (30.9 percent) of consumers surveyed are overwhelmed by the number of channels offered to them
• 88.2 percent watch the same channels over and over again
• 72.8% do not order movies from their Pay-TV providers’ VOD offerings. However, 45.3% of respondents are using subscription OTT services such as Netflix and Hulu
• 53.2% of respondents would like to see recommendations of video content within their channel guide

[March 11]