telecompetitor

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.

Readers have grown accustomed to seeing Tier 2 and Tier 3 landline service providers focusing more closely on the business market to compensate for the erosion of their traditional voice service -- and now at least one Tier 2 wireless service provider also is getting aggressive on the business services front, albeit with somewhat different motivation.

C Spire announced that it plans to acquire MegaGate Broadband, a facilities-based competitive local exchange carrier focused on small- and medium-sized businesses throughout Mississippi. In the announcement, C Spire said the move was part of “continuing efforts to expand its portfolio of services and diversify its core telecommunications and technology services portfolio.”

Geographically MegaGate would appear to be an excellent match for C Spire, which is also focused largely on the state of Mississippi.

AT&T has finalized one of the deals it had pending to deploy gigabit service in the Triangle and Piedmont Triad regions of North Carolina, announcing that the city of Winston-Salem has ratified a gigabit agreement with AT&T.

Winston-Salem is one of six North Carolina university communities that put out requests for proposal (RFPs) for gigabit networks through the North Carolina Next Generation Network. Back in April, AT&T said it was in “advanced discussions” with the NCNGN about those networks. The carrier said that ratification is currently pending with the other five North Carolina cities -- including Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.

Winston-Salem is a big win for AT&T because the company reportedly beaten out several other network operators including Google Fiber, which was one of the first companies to deploy gigabit service.

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.

“A lot of people don’t know how healthy these companies are,” commented Jeff Kohler, co-founder and chief development officer for JAB Broadband. Kohler was referring to the 101 wireless Internet service providers that JAB Broadband has acquired since its founding in 2006.

Kohler has 20 years of experience in telecom with an emphasis on the wireless and financial aspects of the business, and he became attracted to broadband wireless because, with few exceptions, he found that companies in this business were “all good solid businesses,” he said.

JAB now has 170,000 subscribers in 14 states in the Midwest, the Rocky Mountain and the Southwest. Kohlerbelieves that makes JAB the largest wireless Internet service provider (WISP) in the US by a wide margin. In total he estimates there are about 2,500 WISPs nationwide, serving about 3 million subscribers. JAB serves primarily rural areas and suburbs that are distant from core metro areas.

Using the doughnut-and-hole analogy, Kohler said JAB serves the doughnut, but stays out of the hole. About 70% of the locations in JAB’s coverage area can get DSL and about 40% have a cable competitor. JAB mostly uses unlicensed spectrum, but it does have some 2.5 GHz licenses.

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.

C Spire Wireless’s new promotion for Wireless Priority Service (WPS) calls attention to an important emergency service with which some of us may not have been familiar.

“Wireless Priority Service was developed for carriers to allow first responders . . . during a terrorist attack or disaster to have access to priority calling,” explained Terrell Knight, vice president of government and economic development for C Spire.

Wireless networks typically get very heavy traffic during major emergencies as wireless users attempt to get in touch with friends and family. Sometimes networks become so congested that people are unable to place voice calls. When that occurs, WPS puts emergency responders first in line to place a call whenever capacity is freed up because calls have been completed. WPS doesn’t interrupt calls in progress, Knight explained.

On January 30, 2014, the Federal Communications Commission published an order for the creation of trial experiments meant to shape the way the nation’s communications networks provide services during this new era of technological transformation.

These experiments are a way to ensure that the traditional capabilities and values of the telecommunications industry continue after service providers transform their networks to an all-IP architecture. Some of the core guidelines are:

• All Americans must continue to have access to affordable communications services
• Public safety services must be made available regardless of the underlying technology
• Improved competition in the marketplace must provide choice for consumers and businesses
• Consumer protection against fraud is critical for privacy and safety
• While one could easily assume that trials are only of interest to larger carriers, there are plenty of good reasons why

involved, such as the opportunities to:

• Experiment with new services without committing to maintain them forever
• Influence future regulations
• Take advantage of funding available specifically for rural-focused broadband and voice trials

Rural telecommunications providers continue to see gains in broadband availability, average broadband speeds and take rates, according to a survey of rural telecommunications members of NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association.

The vast majority of the nation’s small rural telecommunications companies are NTCA members, and 27% of those members participated in the survey conducted in late 2013. Nearly two-thirds (65.5%) of respondents’ customers can receive broadband at speeds exceeding 10 Mbps, indicating that providers have made substantial progress in installing fiber to the home or to a neighborhood node to improve on the relatively slower rates that can be delivered over copper loops connecting the central office to the customer.

Currently only about 8.5% of customers subscribe to service at rates above 10 Mbps, and the most popular category -- chosen by 34% of subscribers -- is between 3 and 4 Mbps. But as the NTCA notes in the report, “This gap should shrink as customers begin to realize all that can be accomplished online, and as new applications are developed which will require increased bandwidth.”

One of the more impressive data points from NTCA’s survey is that respondents are seeing average broadband take rates of 72%, up from 69% in a similar survey conducted in 2013. Whenever one of the publicly held regional or Tier 2 telecommunications companies sees broadband take rates above 40% or so, some industry observers generally begin to question the remaining upside potential. But such concerns don’t seem to be merited yet in the rural telecom market, despite the high take rates.