mobile data

Vodafone brings intelligence to its data network

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:37:04 -0500

Presently under trial in Spain, Vodafone is testing tiered data services that aim to provide premium users with priority data services together with the intelligent application of ‘fair use' capping.

For customers on Vodafone's €49 per month business tariff, data connections will be made regardless of cell congestion - effectively meaning that non-business users will see their connection dropped in favour of high-paying business subscribers. Currently, the system will usually drop connections to those at the edge of the cell, or operate on a first-come-first-served basis.

However, non-business users will have the benefit of exceeding their fair-use restrictions when data traffic is light. Existing systems restrict traffic to customers who use too much data, but now Vodafone has taken the positive step to throttle the data only if there are other Spanish customers waiting to use it.

Vodafone insists that ordinary users will not suffer poorer performance. A spokesman said that the software tried to "use every scrap of capacity" and all users would benefit. It will assess the system's performance in Spain before deciding whether to roll out it out elsewhere.

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The Register

Mobile data growth is recession proof, claims Orange exec

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:46:54 -0500

The seemingly unstoppable demand for mobile internet access and data services appears to be recession proof, said the global head of France Telecom's Orange mobile business, Olaf Swantee.

He has stated that 24 per cent of its mobile customers were using 30Mb of data per month, compared with just 17 per cent of the customer base who were using 25Mb in February this year, and it includes customers who took pay-as-you-go and pay monthly contracts. It does not include mobile broadband customers.

While Swantee admitted that voice traffic in mature markets was reaching ‘stabilisation', "non-voice revenues seem to be quite recession proof, with music services very successful, and have exceeded expectations."

However, Swantee accepted that the growth of mobile data and the recent trialling of high definition voice services would put pressure on their network, but said they had invested in their 3G infrastructure accordingly.

Of note were comments made by the FT Orange exec concerning network sharing and mergers. Swantee claimed that FT would look for such deals where it made sense in other markets - hinting that the group was looking at potential in-country consolidation opportunities.

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Reuters

Orange causes confusion with iPhone data download limit

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:21:52 -0500

Even though Orange has not yet launched the iPhone in the UK, it has hit trouble by offering an ‘unlimited' data service with a 750Mb per month limit, and implied that subscribers will not be able to use mobile internet applications like Spotify, AudioBoo, Ustream, Facebook and YouTube.

The company has attempted to quell the rising level of concern by claiming its T&Cs state that the handset is "not to be used for other activities (eg using your handset as a modem, non-Orange internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, instant messaging, peer to peer file sharing", a spokesman has stated that "popular streaming services will not be banned for iPhone users."

"As a result," said the Orange exec, "we do not intend to apply network protection controls to anyone, as long as they are within their usage allowance. The T&Cs are in place to reserve the right to restrict access should they continue to exceed our Fair Usage policy."

Orange said that its research in other European countries found that the average user downloaded less than 200Mb per month. Defending the 750Mb limit, the company maintained this would provide a user with either five hours of video downloaded from YouTube, 75,000 mobile web pages, 30,000 normal web pages, around 250 full music tracks or 1,500 mobile games.

Interestingly, the present sole UK distributor of iPhones in the UK, O2, has kept its download offers far more vague without putting a figure on the data limit. There has been evidence of some people receiving a text warning them of their usage and 'suggesting' better plans.

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MacWorld and Network World

LTE needed next year to avert 3G capacity crisis, claims study

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:11:42 -0400

The unremitting growth in data traffic will bring about a 3G network capacity crisis for some mobile network operators as early as 2010. This dire scenario, according to a new study from Unwired Insight, will only be avoided by the early deployment of LTE, and the acceptance that additional LTE spectrum will be required to satisfy this demand.

With 3G traffic volumes set to increase by a factor of 20 by 2015--driven by many technology factors and also dramatic reductions in mobile data pricing--Alastair Brydon, co-author of the new study, points to the example of mobile broadband pricing that has fallen as low as US$2 per gigabyte, "which is nearly half a million times smaller than the price per gigabyte of an SMS message."

Brydon believes that early LTE will be necessary for the following reasons:

As 2G users continue to migrate to 3G services, the available capacity per 3G user will decline rapidly in networks utilising HSPA, to less than 100MB per user per month in some cases. LTE will be essential to counter this decline.
While LTE promises peak data rates of over 100Mbps, this is only possible with wide allocations of spectrum, and particularly good radio conditions. Average data rates from practical LTE networks will be nowhere near the peak values.
Network operators will have an insatiable appetite for LTE spectrum, to stand any chance of keeping up with forecast traffic demand. For some operators, 10MHz of spectrum will be able to support forecast traffic levels only until 2011. A further 10MHz will be needed by 2012 and another 10MHz in 2013.

Unwired Insight claims LTE's ability to relieve the capacity constraints of HSPA networks will be limited initially, until operators can acquire additional spectrum and seed a sufficient number of LTE devices in the market place. "But, we don't expect to see LTE handsets until 2011," the company warns.

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Source Wire

Germany: A declining voice market, but huge mobile data potential, claims new study

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:14:53 -0400

Service revenues in Germany are expected to be lower this year than 2008 by around 1-2 per cent, as consumers become more careful when renewing their mobile subscription. This forecast, from the market research firm Telecompaper, doesn't believe that this decline is due to the overall economic situation, but caused by the commoditisation of mobile voice services as penetration reaches over 130 per cent.

While this revenue slide is not being counterbalanced by the growth of mobile data usage, the study maintains that German operators have fast-tracked the development of data-rich applications. This refocusing is designed to improve profit margins as voice ARPUs continue to fall in response to competition from resellers and regulatory measures on roaming and termination rates.

To support this emphasis on mobile apps, the four operators (albeit that Vodafone and T-Mobile dominate the market with each having around 35 per cent of overall user base) have invested heavily in upgrading their networks. To help with this, the German regulator has anticipated future growth by preparing for fresh UMTS licences in 2009 in the 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz bands, as well as refarming spectrum below 1GHz for use by mobile broadband.

This shift towards mobile apps comes as the competition within the mobile voice market continues to increase with SIM-only deals becoming increasingly popular and nearly 30 MVNOs now operational. And, despite increases in voice usage, ARPUs have experienced sustained erosion over the past five year dropping by €9 since 2004.

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See this data
Consultant Value Added

Mobile internet access grows as operators push flat rate offerings

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:50:56 -0400

Mobile Internet usage is becoming mainstream in Europe, according to a report published by Forrester Research. Today 13 per cent of Western European consumers now access the Internet on their mobile device and 50 per cent know they can use their mobile phone to access the Internet, according to a survey of over 20,0000 European consumers in France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

The growth in mobile broadband usage has led Nokia Siemens Networks to predict that the volume of data traffic will exceed that of voice traffic on mobile networks worldwide by 2011. Nokia Siemens Networks said it expects mobile data traffic to double from almost 400 million gigabytes in 2009 to approximately 2 billion gigabytes a year by 2011, compared to 1.2 billion gigabytes for voice. article

European mobile data grows 28% in Q2 - HTTP downloads overtake P2P

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:04:33 -0400

Worldwide mobile data usage has recorded a significant increase of around 30 per cent in Q2/09. Claiming to have collected data from the leading mobile operators, Allot Communications said Asia-Pacific lead the charge with growth of 36 per cent, Europe registered a 28 per cent improvement, and the Americas had recorded a 25 per cent boost in traffic.

By collating operator data from around the globe--which Allot believes provides it with data traffic information from around 150 million users--the company is able to provide insight into how mobile data networks are being used and what applications are driving this upsurge in traffic.

Allot claims this latest report indicates mobile subscribers, particularly heavy data users, do not distinguish between their fixed and mobile networks, and seem to expect the same service from the Internet, irrespective of their access method. This is beginning to cause, says Allot, problems for mobile operators where the cells themselves can serve as bottlenecks, often greatly contributing to network congestion and delay.

With respect to the application being used, the Q2 study highlighted:

HTTP browsing as the most popular application globally with usage increased by 21 per cent.
HTTP streaming was the fastest growing application with a usage increase of 58 per cent. This included streaming sites such as YouTube and Hulu.
HTTP downloads, which experienced 34 per cent growth globally, are now almost as popular as P2P, and in EMEA have even overtaken P2P in popularity.
P2P accounts for 42 per cent of bandwidth utilisation in the busiest cells on the network, but only 21 per cent in the average cell.

"This report enables operators to map out subscriber behaviour in all its complexities," said Rami Hadar, president and CEO of Allot Communications. "It highlights how subscribers are really using their mobile data services and provides an invaluable overview of the industry and the changes that are taking place as it matures."

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See this Data slideshow
Cellular News

Laptops to drive mobile broadband uptake - data growth 40x by 2017

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:29:16 -0400

The impact of netbooks and laptops on the growth of mobile data traffic has been significant, but a new study claims that, by 2017, there will be 418 million users worldwide using these portable devices generating 1.8 exabytes of traffic per month--a forty-fold increase over 2009.

According to the research, conducted by Coda Research Consultancy, mobile broadband revenues of nearly US$50 billion will come from netbook/laptop users by 2017, with the Asia-Pacific region having 162 million users, Europe 94 million and North America 58 million.

Of note is the estimated impact that LTE will have, with half of all mobile broadband via netbook and laptop users using LTE worldwide in 2017. LTE users will hit 38 million in 2013 after a ramp up in LTE production in 2012, and will rise to 209 million by 2017, a 1100 per cent increase over 2012.

According to Steve Smith, of Coda Research, "LTE take up will be greatly skewed toward European and North American markets in the short to medium term, where ARPU will be highest. However, we will also see significant take up in China, and we may also see countries like India bypass 3G altogether, and move straight to LTE."

However, Smith warns that, while there are tremendous opportunities for both operators and device and component vendors, the risks are significant. "With enormous growth in traffic and considerable decline in ARPU, operators will need to be ruthlessly efficient. Asia Pacific is going to be the hotbed for growth, but it is a complex picture of emerging markets, developed markets and even markets that will leapfrog 3G altogether. LTE is going to be an important cushion for operators, but our research shows they will need to take into account the very different factors impacting 3G and 3G+ growth across regions and decide carefully how, when and where to market LTE."

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Click here to see data from the report
Check out the Coda Research press release

Orange reports 500% increase in dongle subs, as data growth booms

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:12:33 -0400

Orange's fifth Digital Media Index has revealed an over explosion in data usage across its UK network, with the vast majority of it coming from broadband dongle subscriptions which were up more than 500 per cent compared with six months ago.

Paul Jevons, director of products, portals and services for Orange, said this latest Index indicated the mobile data era had truly arrived, and "an explosion in the number of mobile applications and new embedded laptops will boost mobile data demand even further in the coming months."

The company said its Q1/09 results revealed data now accounted for nearly 25 per cent of all of its revenues--up 3.3 per cent on last year. This increase must have been considerably helped by dongle usage having increased by over 4,000 per cent in the 12 months since launch.

Also of note was:

Handset data usage increased by 108 per cent bringing the total number of GB downloaded per month to over 386,000.
The total number of Orange UK customers with 3G handsets and/or dongles rose to 3.824 million as of the end of Q1/09.
Mobile video grew 38 per cent quarter on quarter, with a total of 2.33 million videos downloaded between December and February 2009.
The number of games downloaded topped 771,278 for the three month period, up 8 per cent on the previous quarter.
The number of monthly unique users to social networking sites jumped 48 per cent quarter on quarter to 946,564, while monthly page impressions climbed 129 per cent.
The Orange World portal attracted 3.25 million unique users between December and February 2009, a rise of 26 per cent.

However, the Orange survey also revealed worrying trends in consumer interest areas, given that the most frequent searches were for footballer's wife and pop singer Cheryl Cole, recently deceased reality TV star Jade Goody and US teen entertainer Mylie Cyrus.

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Telecoms.com, Mobile Today and NMA

Data revenues point to iPhone success for O2

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:53:25 -0400

Recent market statistics from The Mobile World Database seem to point to the success being achieved with the iPhone exclusivity O2 is gaining in the UK. While the picture is open to interpretation, during the first six months of 2008 Vodafone generated 28.4 per cent of its revenue from data traffic, well clear of the 22.0 per cent seen at T-Mobile and the 23.2 per cent at Orange--but a far cry from the 35.6 per cent seen at O2 this last quarter. This number from O2 is being attributed to the iPhone, which has also been credited by other European operators for significant increases in data traffic.

The trouble being experienced by T-Mobile UK has also been illustrated in the report, with the company now being placed fourth behind O2, Vodafone and Orange. However, the study does blame some of the slide on Virgin Mobile (a T-Mobile MNVO)--said to have lost market share and having now fallen behind 3UK in customer numbers.

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Cellular News