telecompetitor

Windstream isn’t satisfied with how AT&T has proposed to handle wholesale customers in its proposal for TDM-to-IP transition trials and is asking the Federal Communications Commission to establish rules to govern this aspect of the IP transition.

Windstream, an AT&T wholesale customer, wants the FCC to require AT&T to continue to offer high-capacity circuits including IP equivalents to DS-1 and DS-3 special access circuits -- a requirement that isn’t likely to sit well with AT&T.

In its proposal for the TDM-to-IP trials, AT&T said it would discontinue certain TDM-based offerings but would continue to make copper loops available to other network operators. The company noted, however, that it would not provide electronics, instead expecting the other carriers to provide those electronics -- and what Windstream is asking would require AT&T to provide electronics.

“In the post-IP world, competitors still will need equivalent access to last-mile facilities and services to continue offering business services to millions of customers,” argues Windstream in a letter sent to the FCC.

[Commentary] Netflix and Entropy Economics have issued dueling network diagrams aimed at supporting opposing points of view on paid peering -- an issue that has been hotly debated since Netflix signed a paid peering deal with Comcast earlier this year.

Yet the diagrams have a striking similarity when it comes to showing how Netflix connects to Comcast. It’s possible that by keeping up the pressure about traffic exchange, Netflix is hoping to pressure regulators into imposing some sort of obligations on Comcast and Time Warner Cable as a condition of approval of Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

Now that Charter is involved in that deal as well, it may not be exempt either. And conditions written into merger approvals sometimes have a way of gaining traction beyond the merged companies.

Regulators should tread carefully before imposing any major new traffic exchange requirements. Considering the complexity of the issue and how quickly practices change, it’s difficult even to determine what those requirements might be. The true cost of interconnection is dependent on a wide range of factors. And only the network operators know and understand the dollar values underlying these factors.

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.”

[Commentary] AT&T is trying a new approach toward the over-the-top video opportunity, announcing that it has created a joint venture with media company The Chernin Group to focus on over the top (OTT) video.

The companies said they would jointly invest $500 million in the venture with the goal of “investing in advertising and subscription VOD channels as well as streaming services.” OTT is both an opportunity for and a threat to the nation’s largest pay TV providers -- including AT&T, Verizon and cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

OTT video offerings such as Netflix and Amazon Prime threaten the pay TV providers’ subscription and VOD revenues. But Netflix and Amazon Prime don’t have their own networks -- and those networks could become increasingly important as TV Everywhere gains in popularity, giving consumers the ability to watch video on a variety of devices. And as that happens, companies such as AT&T and Verizon that have mobile as well as landline broadband networks may have an edge.

Based on the press release announcing the AT&T/ Chernin Group venture, the venture partners appear set on capitalizing on that edge.

[Commentary] Netflix appears to be positioning itself as a major voice against the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger.

Sen Al Franken (D-MN) has indicated he intends to invite Netflix’s participation in the regulatory approval debate and Netflix confirmed they intend to take him up on his offer. Needless to say, Comcast isn’t pleased.

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.

Three in 10 US adults do not use the Internet at home -- and getting them online will be considerably more challenging than connecting the first seven, notes a paper released from NTCA -- The Rural Broadband Association.

But the effort would be worthwhile, argues author and NTCA economist Rick Schadelbauer in the paper titled “Conquering the Challenges of Broadband Adoption.” In the paper Schadelbauer also makes a case for why he believes smartphones are not a suitable replacement for landline broadband services.

The 30% of US adults who are not currently connected at home is comprised of roughly equal measures of people who use the Internet somewhere else and those who do not use it at all, according to Schadelbauer. It would be particularly challenging to get the latter group online because a Pew Research Center survey found that 92% of those people said they had no interest in getting online. Others likely do not connect because they cannot afford it or because it is not available to them.