-Stacey Infantino

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Bytemobile released its first-quarter 2010 Mobile Minute Metrics report today. The report anonymously sources the aggregate data traffic in a global cross-section of Bytemobile customers’ wireless networks and provides insight into the current state of the mobile ecosystem.

Analysis of various 3G networks indicates that the data traffic mix is consistent across geographies – with video as the dominant form of traffic.

Other key data from the report:

●Video is the dominant form of laptop-generated wireless traffic. However, automatic software updates consume 10% of the total laptop-generated volume in networks.

●A minority of mobile data users consume the majority of network bandwidth – with 10% generating approximately 85% of total traffic.

●Consistent with 4Q 2009, internet videos average approximately five minutes in length, but users watch them for an average of less than 60 seconds.

●Generally, the majority of mobile videos are downloaded by more than one user, with 36% of videos downloaded up to 100 times and 6% of videos downloaded 1,000 times or more.

1Q 2010 Mobile Minute Metrics – Interactive Presentation

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We set out to investigate if there was a noticeable surge in demand for Super Bowl-related mobile websites such as nfl.com, espn.com, foxsports.com, and cbssports.com.

Analysis of a cross-section of 3G networks in Bytemobile’s U.S. customer base indicated that there was a substantial increase in sports-related applications usage and resulting mobile data traffic around the Super Bowl.

When you consider that a typical day consists of billions of network transactions or mobile data requests, the surge in Super Bowl-related traffic becomes even more significant.

Some of our findings:

● The average increase in transactions resulting from sports-related data traffic on operators’ networks was 41%.

● Transactions on NFL.com increased by an average of 3.7 times.

● Transactions to Fox Sports increased by an average of 3.5 times.

● CBS Sports – the official sponsor of this year’s Super Bowl – generated approximately 3.5 times the transactions than it does on a regular day.

-Stacey Infantino

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The event’s approximately 460 registrants came from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the U.S., and Canada. Attendees represented a broad cross-section of wireless network operators and other participants in the mobile ecosystem.

FierceWireless Editor Phil Goldstein moderated a panel consisting of three speakers: Fabio Mungo, chief technology officer of Accenture Mobility Operated Services; Scott Lane, director of 4G Product Marketing at Sprint; and Joel Brand, vice president of Product Management at Bytemobile.

Fabio Mungo led off the discussion with an overview of the mobility market, its drivers and the impact of those drivers. He characterized it as a ‘market of mass niches’ rather than a mass market per se, indicating that entertainment and data products would drive the U.S. segment to $200 billion in 2010. Mungo cited the interconnection among multiple devices and applications as a key cause and effect of the ‘always connected lifestyle’. He added that low-cost devices and ubiquitous connectivity will continue to spawn a wealth of new mobile applications and business models.

Scott Lane cited the magnitude of the mobile data revolution as comparable with – or potentially even greater than – the PC and internet revolutions that had preceded it. From the carrier’s perspective, the three critical elements for success are: 1) a network to process and deliver the data traffic; 2) spectrum to provide ample capacity for the network; and 3) devices to deliver value to the consumer. Lane also discussed the details of Sprint’s 4G network build-out based on WiMax technology.

Joel Brand focused his presentation on mobile data rate plans of the future, which should balance the respective needs of consumers, carriers and content providers. He cited the impact of flat-rate pricing on the data traffic explosion and subsequent evaporation of data revenue in proportion to volume, as well as the side effect of network resource monopolization by a small percentage of users. The challenge for carriers is to map rate plans to user needs and preferences and to communicate with their customers in order to build value over time. Brand closed with a brief overview of Bytemobile’s WebGate™ Service, which provides carriers with numerous capabilities to meet this challenge.

The webinar concluded with a robust question-and-answer session in which Mungo, Lane and Brand fielded inquiries ranging from ‘Is it necessary to proxy all traffic through a service delivery platform in order to add value?’ (no) to ‘What specific mobile data applications will generate more revenue in the next four to five years?’ (video). Also, the following poll question was posed to the participants and yielded an interesting mix of responses:

Other Mobile Minute events are being planned for the coming months. We will cover these events on our blog and website as part of our ongoing efforts to provide thought leadership and consultative education to the rapidly evolving mobile internet space.

-Jaishree Subramania

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Please join senior executives from Sprint, Accenture and Bytemobile at 11:00 a.m. EST on Thursday, February 4, as they take on these and other critical issues in the first Mobile Minute webinar of the 2010 season.

The February 4 webinar – as advertised in selected FierceMarkets publications throughout Europe, North America and Asia – will be led by FierceWireless as part of its FierceLive! webinar program. Editor Phil Goldstein will moderate the discussion among Scott Lane, director of sales and marketing at Sprint 4G; Fabio Mungo, chief technology officer of Accenture Mobility Operated Services; and Joel Brand, vice president of product management at Bytemobile.

Please register to participate in the event here. The next Mobile Minute webinar will be held in April – stay tuned for details.

-Jaishree Subramania

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With today’s introduction of the Apple iPad - a device for which users’ quality-of-service expectations are extremely high – operators’ capacity challenges are mounting and may push their networks over the edge.

What we know about the Apple iPad:

Every iPad has Wi-Fi, but Apple also has models with 3G.

There are two wireless data plans. The first provides up to 250 MB per month for $14.99. The second provides unlimited data for $29.99. AT&T is the exclusive service provider and includes free use of AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots. In the U.S., wireless operators typically charge about $60 a month for a laptop data plan.

There is no contract — service is prepaid, so consumers can cancel any time. That’s a big change from the iPhone. All iPad 3G models are unlocked, so consumers can use them with any carrier that supports micro-SIM technology.

The question is: are carriers’ networks equipped to handle another, even more massive, explosion of mobile data consumption?

If Apple’s new iPad lives up to the usage patterns – and more importantly – the bandwidth problems of the iPhone, then the answer is: probably not.

In a recent Wall Street Journal blog post, Niraj Sheth wrote:

…the iPhone is hardly the kind of data guzzler the tablet is widely expected to be. After all, it’s one thing to squint at movies on a 3.5-inch screen and quite another to watch them in a relatively cinematic 10 inches.

With this in mind, carriers can surely expect a ‘secondary’ explosion in video and other multimedia traffic. They need to prepare their networks now in order to avoid consumer backlash. Another quantum leap in data traffic will not only strain the network - and thus the user experience - but will also strain profit margins due to out-of-control infrastructure costs.

We should expect to see the wireless industry put a priority on intelligently managing network traffic and experimenting with new ways to curtail the margin squeeze - whether through tiered pricing plans, stricter enforcement of fair use policies or new value-added services.

-Stacey Infantino

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The launch of 3G services in Vietnam marks a major milestone in the history of that country’s mobile communications. In April 2009, the Ministry of Information and Communications awarded 3G licenses to four telecom service providers in Vietnam. Two of the four licensees launched 3G services before the end of 2009.

Competition in the mobile communications market in Vietnam will intensify. Service quality and service plan pricing will be key factors in securing market share. To be competitive, mobile network operators need to differentiate themselves by offering the best quality of service, and at the same time, manage costs by maximizing the utilization of existing resources. A field-proven wireless optimization solution that improves the end-user experience and provides value-added features designed to reduce operating expenses and facilitate new revenue opportunities will be invaluable in overcoming various market challenges.

Bytemobile’s customer-centric approach has become part of the success stories of many mobile network operators today. Please visit this link for a small selection of customer success stories.

-Kok-Bin Lee

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In a recent news release, Telefónica Group announced that it is the first network operator in Spain to launch flat rate plans with Internet browsing speed rates of up to 21 Mbps. The company also announced significant web browsing enhancements as a result of deploying Bytemobile’s Web Optimization application, stating that subscribers that were previously browsing at speeds of 40Kbps in GPRS are now reaching 170Kbps as a result of Bytemobile’s optimization technology.

Like the majority of the world’s largest 3G network operators, Telefónica Spain uses Bytemobile’s Web Optimization application to increase capacity for growth in internet traffic and users, while enhancing the user experience with significant download speed-up on both handsets and laptops.

A long-standing customer of Bytemobile, Telefónica Spain, provides Telecomunication services to 44 million subscribers with more than 25 million mobile customers. As a group it provides telecommunications services to more than 268 million customers worldwide serving more than 205 million mobile customers at the end of September 2009. Today it is the leading mobile network operator in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru, and has substantial operations in UK, Germany, Czech Republic, Ireland, Slovakia, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela. It is also the largest private shareholder of China Unicom, with 8% ownership of the company.

Bytemobile’s Web Optimization works with all devices — from low-end feature phones to high-end smartphones and wireless laptops and netbooks — and all networks — from legacy 2G to Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMAX. Acting transparently to both the content server and the client, Web Optimization requires no special processing or configuration by the content provider or the user.

-Stacey Infantino

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With the iPhone now available from all three of Singapore’s operators, the service plans associated with the device became the main battleground for market share. Throughout the month of December, consumers saw each operator tweaking its respective plan pricing to better the deal of the others. When one came out with an alluring offer, the others responded with similar or better deals almost instantly. Within a span of four days or so, the various iPhone service plans had undergone multiple adjustments and settled into a state of equilibrium, where there is now little difference among the offers of the three operators.

Today, the aggressively priced service plans created for the iPhone are also being offered for other smartphones. In the end, consumers win.

Read iPhone Price Plans Round-Up for more details.

-Kok-Bin Lee

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The opportunities for carriers in the new world of the mobile Internet come with their own challenges. The volume of data that must be carried across the network due to the uptake in mobile internet usage is growing at a significant rate. This uptake may seem like a positive trend that would drive an increase in data revenue. It is only when you realize that the increase in infrastructure investment required to support the data growth outstrips the increase in data revenue that it becomes evident that the current model is unsustainable.

There are a number of options available to address this disparity between cost and revenue. For example, one option would be to move away from the ‘all you can eat’ data tariff approach and introduce tiered pricing for mobile internet services. Another approach would be for carriers to determine how they can effectively add value within the content and media ecosystem in order to create new revenue streams around mobile data.

Considering the options available at a conceptual level is one thing. However, carriers will ultimately need to step through a process of evaluation and decision-making regarding their mobile internet services and how they can most effectively monetize their network assets. For such a process to be effective, it must be informed. The carrier must be able to understand its customers in order to provision mobile internet services to address customer needs - while also delivering a commercially viable product.

This is where most mobile internet services fall short. In the vast majority of cases, visibility of user behavior patterns and content consumption is not available. Even where it is available, the level of detail is insufficient to enable effective decision-making and often limited to the carrier’s on-deck content or oriented toward network-focused metrics. Also, the information is frequently suppositional and based on small sample sets. This should not be the case when the data is carried over the carrier’s own network. So how big an issue is this? Should carriers really be that concerned?

I believe that carriers do have an important role to play in the new world of the mobile Internet and that there is enormous opportunity for them. After all, carriers have the potential for an intimate relationship with their customers through what is arguably the most personal communications channel – the mobile device. The perspective that it is just a matter of time before carriers will need to adopt a low-cost ‘utility’ business model is seriously flawed.

Marketing executives and managers within carriers need to be empowered with information and insight so that they can act, ensuring that the industry makes the most of the opportunity for customer intimacy. In order to seize this opportunity, they must have factual data about their users and what they do on the Internet. This is the key to unlocking business value that will successfully address carriers’ current revenue, cost and profitability challenges.

-Kingsley Harding

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