Analysts Corner

By Philip Bates, Analysys Mason
DISH Network, the operator of the second-largest (by number of subscribers) satellite TV platform in the USA, announced a USD25.5 billion offer for 100% of Sprint, the third-largest mobile operator in the USA. The offer pits DISH against Japan's SoftBank Mobile, which had previously offered USD20.1 billion for 70% of Sprint (see Figure 1). Meanwhile, shareholders in MetroPCS Wireless, the fifth-largest operator, are expected to approve a merger with fourth-placed T-Mobile USA in a vote on 24 April. Read More

By Fred Taylor, Mind Commerce
Between 2010 and 2012, the SDM market saw an ever increasing demand for the unification of ID management services. Amid the demand many large multinational Carriers are now able to manage a single subscriber identify across a centralized database encompassing multiple networks. Read More

By Joe Hoffman, ABI Research
Intel continues their advance into SDN with the release of reference designs for both a server and a switch to promote rapid ecosystem development for SDN/NFV. Read More

By Pablo Iacopino, Analysys Mason
Some bright spots for growth in telecoms revenue are emerging from the gloom of the global economic crisis, but there is no question that service providers will struggle to drive growth in traditional revenue streams in the next few years. Looking to new strategies and new business models is critical to survival and growth. Read More

By Jamie Moss, Informa T&M
EE is the UK’s only 4G wireless carrier. But later on this year Vodafone and O2 will launch their 4G services too. To stay (in its own words) “one step ahead” of this imminent competition, EE has announced that it will double the speed of its 4G services this summer. Read More

By Shira Levine, Infonetics
"Oracle’s recent acquisition of Tekelec ups the ante in the already hot policy management market, where we’re seeing the smaller players being edged out of deals by larger vendors,” notes Shira Levine, Infonetics Research’s directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence. Read More

By Stéphane Téral, Infonetics Research
The U.S., Japan, and South Korea have been fueling the engine with LTE, but weak activity in BRIC countries dragged the overall mobile infrastructure market in 2012,” notes Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research. “The good news, though, is that this year BRIC is coming back with some serious LTE spending Read More

By Dimitris Mavrakis, Informa
Software Defined Networks (SDN) for telecom networks are the next big thing and MWC was not short of announcements and new marketing campaigns from big vendors. It comes at the right time too, when LTE and data awareness now require greater network flexibility, scalability and cost performance. The difference with earlier technologies is that IT vendors are now entering the telecoms market since SDN (or virtualization) is a concept widely used in the IT market. Read More

By Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
Verizon's Executive VP & CFO Fran Shammo today revealed a very interesting fact about the success of the Verizon Wireless 'Share Everything' multi-device shared data plans: the plans are working - that is, they are acheiving the goal of increasing the number of connected devices per account - but it has been a different device than expected that has driven success to date Read More

By ABI Research
As 3G and 4G networks expand worldwide, and more employees adopt smartphones and tablets, many enterprise suppliers are eyeing the mobile video collaboration services market. Many consider this market to be video conferencing on the mobile device; however the most immediate ROI is gained when mobile video collaboration is used to support business processes; particularly service operations. Read More

By ABI Research
Worldwide mobile operator capital infrastructure expenditure in 2013 will experience opposing forces from different regional markets. “In North America, mobile carrier CapEx will grow 2.1% to US$ 13.4 billion as the accelerated LTE equipment spend programs from AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, etc. concentrate spending in 2013,” said Jake Saunders, VP and practice director of core forecasting at ABI Research. “On the other hand, in Western Europe, capital expenditure will contract -1.1%, as maturing networks, and economic uncertainty, trim CapEx.” Read More

By Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
LTE will go mass market in 2013 as more countries join South Korea, the USA and Japan in pushing the technology aggressively into the smartphone market. The Strategy Analytics' Wireless Operator Strategies (WOS) service report, "Worldwide Cellular User Forecasts and Outlook", predicts there will be 1.6 billion LTE connections (excluding M2M) worldwide by 2017: 18 percent of the total market, but generating over 40 percent of service revenues. Read More

By Stéphane Téral, Infonetics Research
Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 2G, 3G, 4G (LTE) Services and Subscribers: Voice, SMS/MMS, and Broadband market size and forecasts report, which tracks mobile services revenue, mobile voice and data average revenue per user (ARPU), and mobile voice and broadband subscribers.As we approach mobile saturation, the mobile industry is undeniably shifting from voice to data, and over-the-top voice revenue is shifting away from mobile operators,” notes Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research. Read More

By Nitesh Patel, Strategy Analytics
Operators have access to demographic and behavioural data of postpaid customers, including gender, age, and address for the former. For the latter operators know the location of customers each time their phone interacts with the network, call records for which numbers and locations they call or text, and how actively the user engages in data services. Prior to the rise of smartphones and OS controlled browsers, operators also had a clear view of which mobile sites most of its users were accessing. Read More

By Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
At the Global Broadband Traffic Management Congress (BBTM) in London November 6-8, Strategy Analytics will join industry leaders in discussing how to monetize mobile data traffic with new solutions for policy control and real-time charging. Recent Strategy Analytics surveys show an overwhelming 60 percent of US smartphone owners would prefer to customize their mobile service plans instead of having a set list of plans from which to choose. Read More

By Shira Levine, Infonetics Research
“We’re seeing growing operator momentum around the concept of monetizing subscriber data, whether in the form of brokering it to third-party advertisers and content providers, or assuming the role of ‘identity provider’ and providing authorization and authentication services to third parties based on subscriber information,” notes Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence at Infonetics Research.

By Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
The Strategy Analytics Mobile Broadband Opportunities (MBO) service report, “Leaders in DPI/Policy Control Targeting Top Needs of Mobile Operators,” predicts the Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) market will top US$ 2 billion in 2016 as DPI expands its role as a core element of cost reduction, improved user experience, and new service delivery in mobile networks Read More

By Shira Levine, Infonetics
Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest Service Provider Deep Packet Inspection Products report, which tracks standalone deep packet inspection (DPI) vendors and solutions for wireless and fixed-line networks Read More

By Rich Karpinski, Yankee Group
The emergence of shared data plans has locked in data tiers and caps as the foundation of mobile data pricing, particularly in the U.S. But things aren’t standing still. Shared plan hold-outs have countered with moves including a return to unlimited pricing, while cap stalwarts such as AT&T and Verizon are mulling a slew of new approaches that build on the foundations of tier-based pricing. The entire mobile ecosystem will be affected by what comes next. (Report for purchase) Read More

By Graham Finnie, Heavy Reading
It may not be moving quite as fast as it was in 2011, but the policy and DPI express train is still rolling along nicely, according to the latest edition of our Policy Control & DPI Market Tracker – and it's taking on new carriages as it does so. Read More

By Shira Levine, Infonetics Research
Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest Policy Management Software market size, vendor market share, and forecast report, which tracks policy management software deployed in wireless networks (3G broadband, WiMAX, LTE) and in fixed-line broadband and cable broadband networks. Read More

By Caroline Chappell, Heavy Reading
After years of resistance, the telco industry is having a "Eureka!" moment. Across the globe, operators are realizing that they must make serious investments in building digital services ecosystems to stave off the threat of becoming dumb pipes.  Read More

By Graham Finnie, Heavy Reading
Congestion in the RAN is a devilishly tricky problem to tackle, but it's not a problem that's lacking in proposed remedies. In its new report, "RAN Congestion Control & the Road to QoE," Heavy Reading identifies 32 companies selling RAN congestion control solutions of one kind or another, and that number is most likely an underestimate. There's a mini-investment boom going on in this area. Read More

By Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
Verizon Wireless finally unveiled the details of its new shared data plans, which it has been hinting at for quite some time. The new plans launch June 28.  Strategy Analytics has been recommending shared data plans for some time, based in part on our consumer research that shows strong consumer interest in sharing data across multiple devices. We have observed numerous markets that have launched shared data plans over the last year, such as Canada and a number of European countries - finally the wraps are off on the first major US operator to launch its shared data plans. Read More

By Shira Levine, Infonetics Research
The global subscriber data management (SDM) market, including SDM software and services for mobile and fixed line networks, reached $570 million in 2011, up 57% from 2010, reports market research firm Infonetics Research in its latest Subscriber Data Management Software and Services report. Infonetics’ year-ago SDM forecast was within 1% of actual 2011 results. Read More

By Phil Kendall, Strategy Analytics
The growing availability of LTE smartphones has delivered a significant boost to the technology over the last 6 months and Strategy Analytics has upgraded its forecasts to one billion LTE connections by early 2017. The US, South Korea and Japan are leading the way in 2012, with greater global scale achieved in 2013. By 2017, LTE will generate over one -third of mobile service revenues. Strategy Analytics' report "Worldwide Cellular User Forecast: 2012-2017" provides global forecasts of subscription, technology and revenues, with detail for 82 individual countries. Read More

By Graham Finnie, Heavy Reading
"Where will services be in ten years? Everything will be contextual, which will make all our lives a lot simpler. And we [the carriers] have an important role in this." So said John Donovan, senior executive VP of  AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) Technology and Network Operations, at an Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) session at CTIA Wireless 2012 this year. Read More

By Graham Finnie, Heavy Reading
It's not quite a bonanza yet, but the policy control and deep packet inspection (DPI) market is big and it's going to get quite a bigger in the years ahead, making it one of the industry's most significant current opportunities. Read More

By Shira Levine, Infonetics Research
Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest Policy Management Software market size, market share, and forecast report, which tracks policy management software deployed in wireless networks (3G broadband, WiMAX, LTE) and in fixed-line broadband and cable broadband networks. Read More

By Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
Now that Apple has announced that the new iPad includes 4G LTE, 4G hotspot capability for tethering other devices, as well as HSPA+ at 21 Mbps and dual-carrier HSDPA at 42 Mbps, mobile broadband will enter into a new era. Read More