telecompetitor

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.

AT&T wants to discontinue offering DSL service to some customers in its TDM-to-IP transition trials, said FCC officials at the commission’s monthly meeting, where an update on plans for the trials was provided.

The company envisions that its cellular-based Wireless Home Phone would replace DSL for many customers, the officials said, noting however that the FCC has concerns about whether the offering would be a suitable replacement. FCC officials also noted that the commission plans to select a “third party” to develop a research methodology for the TDM-to-IP transition trials and that AT&T has expressed its willingness to work with the third party, the officials said.

AT&T has told the FCC that it expects to seek approvals in the second half of 2015 to discontinue certain traditional TDM services, officials said.

FCC officials noted that trial-related development efforts underway at AT&T include:

• How to deliver a street address to 911 using the wireless-based service
• Making replacement offerings compatible with alarm systems, medical alerts, fax machines and devices used to validate credit cards
• Making replacement products TTY accessible
• How to serve approximately 4% of the customers in Carbon Hill who do not have access to AT&T U-verse or to AT&T wireless service

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.