telecompetitor

Half of Verizon FiOS Internet customers have opted for a FiOS bandwidth upgrade, said Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam.

Verizon uses the brand name Quantum for its higher-speed data services, which offer data rates as high as 500 Mbps. Upgrades to Quantum are being driven by increased use of video and the proliferation of WiFi-capable devices within customers’ homes, McAdam said.

McAdam added that Verizon could easily raise FiOS data rates to a gigabit per second but has no near-term plans to do so. For residential users to need gigabit connectivity, the industry “has to come up with new apps besides video and more devices,” he said.

Previously FiOS data and FiOS video had similar take rates, but more recently the company has been signing up 20% to 40% more broadband customers. This shift may be driven, in part, by customers shifting toward over-the-top video options. But McAdam isn’t concerned about the possibility of more customers moving in that direction because margins are better on broadband.

“If they convert over, that’s fine,” he said. “The more traffic into the home, the better for us because we’ve got the technology that’s future-proof. We’re in the best position to capitalize on high-volume traffic going into the home.”

Frontier Communications plans to offer a landline phone service designed for emergency use only, said Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter. He said Frontier is planning a residential VoIP product to be launched in the second half of 2014.

Frontier’s planned emergency phone service targets rural areas, which represent a large portion of Frontier’s customer base.

Like all local phone companies, Frontier is seeing customers canceling landline service and moving to cellular or other alternatives. But as Wilderotter noted, rural areas experience frequent power outages. And because traditional phone service is powered from the phone company’s central office, it could provide a reliable communications method even during an extended outage.

Frontier believes there is a market for an emergency landline phone, which would be capable only of dialing Frontier or a 911 operator. The service will have “four nines” reliability, Wilderotter said, using telecom jargon for a service that is available 99.99% of the time.

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.

Charter Communications is working on some important new set-top box technology, Charter Communications President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Rutledge revealed.

The goal is to use IP communications to the set-top box, which will act as a thin client that can be updated from the head-end to support new capabilities, including security system functionality.

Charter is working on technology that would enable any set-top box the company has deployed to act as a thin client that the company can easily upgrade through an IP connection. The company hopes to have the technology deployed throughout its network by 2015. “From an investment perspective and a capital intensity perspective it [makes things] a lot easier,” said Rutledge of the new approach.

The thin client approach also will enable Charter to “leverage the interactivity of our network,” said Rutledge, adding “that’s what differentiates us from satellite.” Using a thin client “enables you to stay state-of-the-art and it’s also customizable,” Rutledge noted. “Whatever interfaces you think are attractive might not be what somebody else thinks is attractive and you have all the different demographics,” he said. “I could see a world where everybody could make up their own user interface.”

It has been a rule of thumb that US cable TV operators have operating costs lower than their major telecommunications competitors. But on one metric -- revenue per employee -- AT&T and Verizon arguably perform much more efficiently than US cable TV operators.

Between 2007 and 2012, AT&T eliminated 67,620 jobs, almost a quarter of its workforce. At least in part, that accounts for average sales per AT&T employee of $495,000 in 2012, up from $209,000 in 2006. Over the same five-year period, Verizon eliminated 48,000 jobs. Industry wide, employment in the entire telecom industry has fallen by almost 200,000 since 2007, according to the US Labor Department.

Most of those cuts have come in the fixed network business, as mobile segment headcounts have been roughly flat between 2001 and 2008, and have been declining since 2008. Between 2008 and 2010, the mobile segment lost about 40,400 jobs overall, by some estimates. By other estimates, US mobile business jobs dropped by only about 10,000.

The point is that, by any estimate, most of the lost US communications jobs have come from the fixed network business. Still, it remains the case that US cable operators have operating cost structures lower than the leading US telecommunications companies.

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.

[Commentary] With Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler vowing to take action against state-level laws that block municipal broadband networks, we are seeing considerable debate about the pros and cons of those networks. Nineteen states currently have laws limiting and in some cases effectively prohibiting municipalities from offering commercial services on broadband networks constructed by the municipality, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I thought it would be a good idea to review the arguments on both sides.

Supporters of municipal broadband opposition laws
Chairman Wheeler’s opponents, including industry research consultancy The Precursor Group, say the FCC would be overstepping its authority if it were to take the sort of action Wheeler has threatened. “Municipalities are legal creations of the state, not the federal government,” argued Scott Cleland, president of The Precursor Group, in a blog post.

Opponents of anti-municipal broadband laws
Municipal network supporters, including the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative, dispute the claim that “the vast majority” of community networks have been failures. Noting that there have been more than 400 municipal projects to date, Chris Mitchell -- director of the ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative -- said there were some projects that didn’t work out but others that have had major benefits. As for FCC authority, Mitchell said the recent Net Neutrality court decision said that the FCC had the authority to remove barriers to broadband network deployments.

What happens next?
In taking action against anti-municipal network legislation, Mitchell believes the FCC will go after the “most egregious” state-level laws. He cited North Carolina as one state with such laws, noting that the North Carolina law totally prohibits municipal networks. But if the FCC makes such a move, Cleland argues that it will encounter substantial opposition.

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.