Ericsson's 2020 Predictions: 14GB/Month, Smartphoneד, Video ...

Some highlights from Ericsson's new Mobility Report, forecasting how mobile data will look like in 2020:

• Advanced mobile technology will be commonplace around the globe: smartphone subscriptions will more than double, reaching 6.1 billion, 70% of the world's population will be using smartphones, and 90 percent will be covered by mobile broadband networks.

• Smartphone data is predicted to increase ten-fold, when 80 percent of all mobile data traffic will come from smartphones. Average monthly data usage per smartphone in North America will increase from 2.4 GB today to 14 GB by 2020.
•  26 billion connected devices 

• Mobile video traffic will grow by a staggering 55 percent per year and will constitute around 60 percent of all mobile data traffic by the end of that period. Growth is largely driven by shifting user preferences towards video streaming services, and the increasing prevalence of video in online content including news, advertisements and social media.

See "Ericsson Mobility Report: 70 percent of world's population using smartphones by 2020" - here.

[Infonetics]: "Despite the rise of mobile data, blended ARPU continues to fall"

A recent report by Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics, Infonetics Research (the first after being acquired by IHS - here - Congratulations to J'Amy, Shira and the team!) finds that:

• "Worldwide mobile service revenue barely budged in the first half of 2014 (1H14), up just 0.5% from the same period a year ago, to $385.5 billion .. For the first time, voice usage slightly slowed, dragged by China where over-the-top (OTT) alternatives took their share, and mobile broadband overtook SMS as the largest revenue generator of mobile data. 

• Mobile broadband revenue rose 26% in 1H14 from 1H13 and continued to drive overall mobile services market growth .. Despite the rise of mobile data, blended ARPU continues to fall, but at a much slower pace in every region, including developing Asia Pacific"  

See "Mobile broadband overtakes SMS as largest generator of mobile data revenue" - here.

[ABI]: 10B Wireless Devices today, 30B in 2020

7B people, 10B wireless devices, 30B in 2020. Not all cellular, but still plenty to manage and control.

Peter Cooney, practice director, ABI Research recent research finds that "Internet of Everything (IoE) shows that there are more than 10 billion wirelessly connected devices in the market today; with over 30 billion devices expected by 2020".

See "More Than 30 Billion Devices Will Wirelessly Connect to the Internet of Everything in 2020" - here.

[CTIA 2012 Survey]: Data +69%, Voice +0.2%; SMS -4,9%

 

CTIA published its its semi-annual survey, providing information on both investments made in the US wireless networks and usage information. "U.S. wireless providers increased their annual network investments from $25.3 billion in 2011 to $30.1 billion in 2012 (up 19 percent). The $30.1 billion is the highest amount since the survey began in 1985, which is approximately 25 percent of the world’s total".

As for usage information:

• Wireless subscriber connections: 326.4 million (102 percent penetration); 2011: 315.9 million (3.3 percent increase)
• Wireless network data traffic: 1.468 trillion megabytes; 2011: 866.8 billion (69.3 percent increase).
• Minutes of Use (MOU): 2.2999 trillion; 2011: 2.2955 trillion (4.4 billion minute increase or .2 percent).
• SMS sent and received: 2.19 trillion; 2011: 2.3 trillion (4.9 percent decrease).
• Ce: 74.5 billion; 2011: 52.8 billion (41 percent increase).

At the end of 2012, US MNOs had 301,779 cell sites, compared to 283,385 at the end of 2011 (+6.5%). 

   

See "CTIA-The Wireless Association® Semi-Annual Survey Shows U.S. Wireless Providers Invested Almost Six Times More Per Subscriber than Rest of World" - here.

[ABI]: Data Revenues will Exceed 40% by 2014

   

A recent report by Ying Kang Tan (pictured), research associate and Jake Saunders, VP and practice director, core forecasting, ABI Research, concludes that "Global mobile data service revenue, made up of mobile internet and messaging revenue, will rise by 21.4% between 2012 and 2014 to represent 40.4% of the US$1 trillion mobile customers will be spending on their mobile phone services .. North America will be the first region to see mobile data service revenue eclipse voice revenue in 2016".

“By offering unlimited voice calls and texts, while making data the only component in a bundled plan with positive marginal costs to consumers, wireless operators as AT&T and Verizon help to prop up voice and messaging, making positive revenue contributions in the short to medium-term. Rich Communication Services (RCS) and voice and messaging APIs are a key part of their strategy of making carrier-based calls and messaging relevant to their customers”.

See "Global Mobile Data Will Exceed 40% of Total Service Revenue by 2014" - here.

Virgin Mobile Cap Removed due to Connectivity Problems

Traffic shaping is not as easy as it seems ..

Few days after reporting that Virgin Mobile caps mobile speed at 2Mbps (here), Bill Ray updates to The Register that "Virgin Mobile UK has suspended its internet speed cap while it tries to get its network reliability back up to scratch. Large numbers of the operator's customers suffered intermittent connectivity over the last week or so, quite possibly related to the company's attempt to impose a 2Mbit-per-second cap on mobile internet download speeds .. Virgin Mobile said it has identified the cause of the connection problems - located deep within EE's phone network upon which Virgin Mobile piggybacks its operations - and is working to get a fix in place".

Virgin support page further explains that as "We’re still working hard to resolve the network issues customers have been seeing, where customers are getting intermittent or no internet access, and problems with apps not working. Our network partner EE have removed certain network controls to see whether this can help to pinpoint the issue. This has included temporarily removing the speed cap".

See "Virgin Mobile doffs its cap: Web speed limit axed after outrage" - here.

AT&T Presents Allot

An interesting (or may I say a bit unusual) post, by Sander Biehn (pictured), Account Manager, AT&T in the carrier blog about the reasons and ways to handle bandwidth demand on mobile networks.

Unlike the more common case of vendors presenting customer case studies (the source for my 230+ deployments stories), in this case a [potential?] customer presents and agrees with the vendor's solution.

"I caught up with Scott Poretsky (pictured), Director of Solutions Architecture for the Americas at Allot Communications, who specializes in solving these problems for enterprises and mobile operators. I asked him about what is trending around the causes of the mobile bandwidth crunch and solutions to cure the problem .. Scott and I also discussed some ideas to meet the challenge - Security .. Usage policy.. Fair access to business resources .. Meeting SLAs in the cloud .. [and] Video caching".

See "5 Ways To Quench The Mobile Internet Thirst" - here; appears also at Allot's own blog (here).

[Signals Research] Users are Willing to Pay for Personalization

A study of 3,500 mobile broadband consumers from Brazil, India, South Korea, UK and US by Signals Research Group (sponsored by Tekelec) finds that "Customers want more choices in how they can mix and match services, and they are willing to pay for a greater degree of personalization across services, such as: Email, Web Browsing, Social Networking, Multi-User Gaming, Sports/News/Video, Voice over IP, TV and Movies, Cloud, Remote Lock/Remote Wipe"

Source: Mobile Broadband Pricing and Bundling - the Voice of the Consumer, Tekelec 

".. In addition, customers ranked pricing concepts based on Usage and Specific Applications higher than those based on Bandwidth/Performance, Family Sharing/Bundling of Devices, Casual Usage, or Free Access with Advertising. Service providers have an opportunity to generate incremental revenues if they sell tailored services to customers whose devices are capable, but not yet part of a mobile data plan"

See "Mobile subscribers willing to pay for service bundles ‘their way’" - here.

[Wireless Intelligence]: 1.6B Mobile Broadband Connections

Nice infographics from Wireless Intelligence showing mobile broadband statistics by geography and technology. 72% are HSPA based, 4% LTE.

See "Analysis: Dashboard, Mobile Broadband" - here.

[Ovum]: "Mobile broadband presents the single largest opportunity for telcos"

A recent report by John Lively (pictured), VP & Chief Forecaster Industry, Communications & Broadband, Ovum reveals that "mobile broadband presents the single largest opportunity for telcos to claw back revenue, as forecasts show mobile broadband growing 19.2 percent annually and generating US$122.9bn in incremental revenue between 2013 and 2016. Other segments with double-digit revenue growth over the next five years include public cloud, enterprise Ethernet, IPTV, and managed/hosted IP voice".

"In the consumer segment this will involve competing with new over-the-top players as well as traditional competitors. To meet this challenge, Ovum recommends adopting consumer-services marketing approaches .. Ovum recommends that vendors position themselves in one or more high-potential product segments, such as converged packet optical, ROADMs, 40G/100G networking gear, carrier Wi-Fi, and network-related services"

See "Ovum reveals mobile broadband presents the largest opportunity for operator revenue growth until 2016" - here.

[BI Intelligence]: Mobile Video is Set to Explode, Unless ..

A new report from BI Intelligence finds that mobile video is set to explode! - unless carriers will not like it - i.e. won’t be able to monetize video traffic in a friendly way to the subscribers, in view of the infrastructure investments needed.

"Mobile video has historically been held back by a single factor: bandwidth. But 4G LTE is changing that, and mobile video is already more popular on the faster wireless networks"

The main reasons for the expected explosion are: "Significant mobile device growth to come, Increase in 4G LTE accessibility and Mobile video viewing appears to be additive .. The big question is how carriers will respond to the resulting data demands. If carriers limit data with tiered plans and high prices, mobile video's potential could be stifled".

According to BI Intelligence "Mobile video already accounted for more than 50% of global mobile data traffic for the first time in 2011" although according to Ericsson the numbers are still lower (25-40% - here).

 

See "BII REPORT: Why Mobile Video Is Set To Explode" - here.

[Analysys Mason]: How to Calculate the Cost of Data?

A paper by Amrish Kacker (pictured), partner, Analysys Mason, discusses the costing of data: "Costing of data is not an end in itself, but is the basis to understanding the key drivers that affect data costs and the cost boundaries within which the business can operate".

"A structured approach to costing can provide the information required for sound decision making, and needs to address the following key areas: Cost definition: what is the appropriate cost base? ..Cost recognition: what is the appropriate depreciation methodology in recognising the asset lifetimes and utilisation? .. Cost allocation: what is the appropriate basis for allocation of common costs across services?"

See "Mobile data services: a structured approach to data costing is the first step to profitability" - here.

[Yankee Group]: "Aito Technologies and Neuralitic will play key roles in CEM"

  

A new research by Declan Lonrrgan (pictured), VP, Yankee Group, concludes that "While today’s U.S.$1 trillion mobile broadband marketplace presents many challenges to operators, it also provides many opportunities. Operators that embrace OTT, adopt new business models for network data, cloud and video, and leverage their unique subscriber relationships to deliver optimal customer experiences will be best positioned to not only cope with but capitalize in this volatile segment".

"Operators will look beyond connectivity for sustainable differentiation. During the next two to three years, we expect to see more bundling of OTT communications apps with LTE subscriptions as well as operators increasing their portfolio of cloud-based solutions, including offering bundled content-storage and backup with premium LTE services" 

"Vendors will step up in the customer experience realm. New players including Aito Technologies and Neuralitic will play key roles, as will traditional stalwarts such as Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei".

See "What's Next for Mobile Broadband" - here.

Ericsson: Online Video 25-40% of Mobile Traffic Volume; Tethering - 2-4%

 
Ericsson published its Mobility Report for Q3, 2012 with lots on interesting data on mobile traffic, devices, coverage speed and penetration. See "Ericsson Mobility Report Shows Rapid Smartphone Uptake and Doubling of Mobile Data Traffic" - here and here and the report itself (here).

Among the more surprising finding is the relatively low percentage of on-line video - 25-40%, even for tablets. While 20% were classified as "others" and some other classes (like social) may also carry video this is still lower share compared to other reports (which usually shows 40% as the lowest value).

Tethering also shows small percentage (2-3%) - so either the surcharges prevent users for using it, it is too complicated to use or just not useful ...

Some highlight related traffic management:

• Traffic Mix - the chart below ".. shows how the most widely used online applications contribute to overall mobile data traffic volumes, and how these contributions vary by the type of connected device. This is based on average values from the measured networks. Actual values in individual networks can differ a lot. Regardless of device type, online video is the biggest contributor to traffic volumes (25-40 percent), followed by web browsing (15-20 percent). Traffic drawn from mobile PCs is notable for having significantly higher file sharing activity than other devices. Online audio, email, software downloads and social networking are also important contributors to data traffic on tablets and smartphone devices. The file sharing part under smartphones comes from tethering traffic. 

• Tethering - The next chart "shows the penetration of tethering from mobile phones with different operating systems. Tethering can easily be set up on the majority of Android and iPhone devices currently available on the market. This is one reason why these devices are the ones most commonly used for tethering. There is a large variation between networks created by different operator policies towards tethering. On the average network, around 3.5 percent of Android smartphones are used to tether other devices and enable internet access. The tethering penetration is around six percent in the network with the highest amount of Android tethering users. One trend is that operators increasingly charge consumers for tethering devices. However, some regulator and consumer interest groups have opposed introducing tethering fees to data plans.
  Mobile data tethering traffic was identified correlating the IMEI TAC (terminal identifier) of the terminal accessing the HSPA network and the user agent HTTP header field containing information about the end user terminal and application. Identifying tethering with the same terminal model is thus not possible. Measurements were performed during one week. The percentage of tethering users would be higher if measured over a month. Only subscriptions with data traffic are considered, voice-only subscriptions are excluded".
  
  [the chart shows the largest value measured in one of the networks, Average value of the measured networks’ values (black line) and the smallest value measured in one of the networks]

[Sharma]: US Wireless Signaling Traffic Increased 3X

Some highlights from Chetan Sharma's report on the US wireless for Q3, 2012 [see below]:

• The US mobile data market grew 3% Q/Q and 17% Y/Y to reach $19.9B in Q3 2012
   
• Most western markets have seen the net revenue in the messaging segment decline. The US market has resisted the decline thus far. In Q3 2012, for the first time, there was a decline in both the total number of messages as well as the total messaging revenue in the market.
   
• New types of plans [shared data] also evolved the decades-old operator metric of ARPU to ARPA (Average Revenue Per Account) given that we are seeing a strong influx of multiple devices per individual/household
   
• The overall data consumption in the US market in 2012 is expected to exceed 2000 Petabytes or 2 Exabytes. The smartphone data consumption at some operators is averaging close to 900 MB/mo. Some devices are averaging close to 2 GB/mo. As we move into 1GB range along with the family data plans kicking in, you can expect the data tiers to get bigger both in GBs and dollar amount.
   
• Mobile data traffic growth is likely to slow down to roughly 80% after doubling for the last five years. Voice traffic will dip below 10% of the overall traffic in 2012.
   
• The Signaling traffic has increased 3x.

See "Us wireless market_q3_2012_update_nov_2012_chetan_sharma_consulting" - here

Vodafone: Pricing Strategy: Stimulating Data Usage

Vittorio Colao (pictured), Vodafone's CEO, presented, together with the groups' 2012 September 30 results [here], his Vodafone 2015 Strategy - for Consumer, Enterprise, Networks and Operations. See slides, related to pricing and data traffic, below.

In the 6 months ending at September 30, voice and messaging revenues decreased by 14% and 10.6% respectively, compared to the same period last year.

Data revenues increased by 5.7% and are now 16% of all service revenues (including fixed services revenues), compared to 12.2% during the same period last year.

See "Vodafone Group Plc Interim Results For the 6 months ended 30 September 2012" - here.

Singapore: Who is Using Data Throttling? (Answer: Everybody)

Sidney Wong covers in an article for Singapore Hardware Zone the different methods operators are using to handle ".. tremendous surge in data traffic that is exerting a lot of pressure on telcos to maintain a decent user experience on their mobile networks".

For data throttling - "We reached out to the three telcos in Singapore on their takes on data throttling, and you will be very surprised by what we've found out. As you might know, IDA works with the various service providers to provide a reasonable level of service quality to consumers. The authority is aware that service providers may need to manage their networks some way or the other in order to optimize the quality of their services to subscribers in general. You can find out more about IDA's stand on this here".

• StarHub - "To prevent service deterioration and to enhance the end-user experience for all, StarHub implements network management techniques to ensure that no application or user should dominate finite network resources, especially during peak surfing hours (6pm to 2am on weekdays and 11am to 2am on weekends)," said Mr. Mock Pak Lum, StarHub's Chief Technology Officer [pictured]".
  
  See "StarHub Selected Neuralitic for Usage Profiling and Monetization" - here and "PCRF: Starhub [Singapore] Selected NSN" - here.
   
• M1 - "We do conduct traffic management of peer-to-peer protocol during peak hours, to maintain service quality to all users. M1’s network management ensures fair and consistent traffic utilization across our customer base and applications," said Petrina Teoh, Senior Manager for Corporate Communications.

• SingTel - "SingTel optimises the quality of its mobile broadband services with its fair-use policy which aims to ensure a smooth and consistent experience for all customers. When customers have exceeded the $94 data cap, their mobile line will be limited to a speed of 64Kbps until the end of the monthly bill cycle. To reach the $94 cap, customers would have to consume 18GB of data usage on top of their bundled allowance for the month," said Dylan Tan, Senior Corporate Communications Manager.
  
  See "Singtel: 10% of Subscribers Consume 64% of Data; Implements Tiered Services" - here.

See "Telcos' Strategies to Manage Mobile Data Traffic Flow" - here.

[BI Intelligence]: Surprise! Smartphone and LTE will Drive Mobile Video

A new report by BI Intelligence analyzes the ".. impact of 4G LTE and device design improvements on mobile video growth, examines who watches mobile video and how they watch it, and details the mobile video monetization opportunity".

According to the report, the current state of mobile video market is:

"Mobile video viewing appears to be additive .. the mobile video audience is expanding rapidly .. Mobile video advertising is becoming increasingly popular .. And, we could just be getting started: The expected growth in the number of tablet and smartphone users globally, coupled with increased accessibility to 4G LTE and the integration of larger screens and speedier processors in mobile devices, should all drive significantly more mobile video consumption in the near future"

  

See "BII REPORT: The State of Mobile Video" - here.

[Wireless Intelligence]: Top 20 Global Operator Groups

    

Wireless Intelligence published its ‘Scoreboard’ operator ranking.for Q2, 2012. "The new ‘Scoreboard’ tracks the top 20 global operator groups by connections based on majority-owned assets in Q2 2012. Minority holdings (less than 50 percent plus one share) are excluded from the analysis".

Compared to the Q2 2011 scoreboard (see "World's Top20 Mobile Groups" - here) - Bharti Airtel (now #4) and Telefonica (#5) switched places.

  

"China’s three mobile operators all recorded double-digit subscriber growth over the last year .. France Telecom (#12) returned to the top 20 after dropping out of the list a year ago".

Source:Wireless Intelligence

See "Analysis: The top 20 global operator groups by mobile connections (Q2 2012)" - here.

New Mobile Usage Tracking App Predicts Future Usage

 
With the disappearing of unlimited data services, mobile subscribers may find the following useful, with its prediction feature.

Princeton EDGE Lab has just released a new iOS application, DataWiz, providing control over wireless data use (cellular and Wi-Fi). See the chart below for the EDGE configuration; The DPI equipment is from Allot Communications.

"The DataWiz data tracker app precisely monitors your mobile device’s usage AND predicts future usage so you can save money on your mobile bill. This innovative technology, developed by the great minds at Princeton University’s EDGE Lab, empowers you to take control of your mobile data plan and keep expenses within your budget. With a cool, user-friendly interface, easy-to-understand graphs, data usage quota caps, and regular alerts, you’ll never go over your mobile data allowance again!"

EDGE Lab logical topology

See "DataWiz - Free Mobile Data Management" - here.