Post Archive - 2012
Jul 15
2012
2012
Wireless Users Shifting Away From Contracts to Prepaid
According to new data recently crunched by consultant Chetan Sharma, there's a notable shift among United States consumers away from two-year contract wireless plans -- and toward more cost-friendly prepaid options. According to Sharma, the top seven wireless carriers in the United States lost 52,000 postpaid customers last quarter, the first such… Read more
Jul 1
2012
2012
Carriers to replace buckets of minutes with unlimited calling
The nations' Tier 1 carriers are increasingly toying with the idea of getting rid of options that allow customers to have tiered voice minute packages in favor of a flat rate for unlimited calling, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Although no concrete plans have been introduced, and the carriers have not said when they might make… Read more
Jun 15
2012
2012
Mobile Signaling Load Growing Faster than Bearer Traffic
While data traffic is growing, signaling traffic is outpacing actual mobile data traffic by 30 to 50 percent, if not higher, 4G Americas says. Mobile network engineers began encountering that problem some years ago, when investigating cases of congestion on cell sites that seemed not to be experiencing especially-heavy demand. As it turned out… Read more
Jun 1
2012
2012
U.S. Mobile Data Revenue to Grow 86% Next 5 Years
Multi-device or "family" rate plans will be a key driving factor in the expansion of U.S. data revenue from $81.4 billion in 2011 to $151.9 billion in 2016, according to analysts at Gartner. The leading service providers in the U.S. market have been talking about shared data plans for years. And there are good reasons for doing so. It wouldn't be… Read more
May 15
2012
2012
Mobile Devices to Put More Strain on Networks by 2016
A new survey by Juniper Research has found that notebook computers and e-readers will onload 24 percent of traffic onto data networks by 2016, Cellular-News reports. The prevalence of game consoles, tablets, and smartphones will also increase the load placed on mobile networks, an amount of data reaching over 7,500 petabytes. The figure is due to… Read more
May 1
2012
2012
Smart Phone Subsidies, Prepaid Pose Key Issues for Mobile Service Providers
Smart phones represent a bit of a conundrum for mobile service providers. On one hand, smart phones drive sales of mobile data plans that are the primary source of new revenue at the moment. On the other hand, most consumers do not want to pay full retail prices for the latest devices, preferring service contracts that amortize the cost of a device… Read more
Apr 15
2012
2012
The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has released its 2012 ICT Market Review & Forecast (MR&F). The MR&F provides the ICT industry's most comprehensive, trusted data review, with forecasts through 2015.
Many findings from the report focus on the impact of the growth of smartphones and tablets, cloud-related services and video… Read more
Apr 1
2012
2012
Mobile Bandwidth Demand Will Double Every Year Through 2015
Internet-generated broadband traffic will increase approximately 50 percent year over year on fixed networks and double on mobile networks. IDC also notes that fixed and mobile traffic volumes are driven by power users. IDC forecasts that end-user demand for worldwide wireline and mobile broadband traffic will increase from 9,665 petabytes per… Read more
Mar 15
2012
2012
Infonetics: 46% growth seen in VoIP, IMS market in 2012
Despite increased activity in the carrier VoIP and IP Multimedia Subsystem equipment market in the fourth quarter, the segment tracked down for the year, according to a new report from Infonetics. The research company, in its quarterly Service Provider VoIP and IMS Equipment and Subscribers report attributed the 2 percent slide to poor… Read more
Mar 1
2012
2012
Mobile Data Traffic Will Grow 18 Times Next 5 Years
According to the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index, worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month, an annual run rate of 130 exabytes, by 2016. The monthly 130 exabytes is equivalent to consumption of 33 billion DVDs; 4.3 quadrillion MP3 files (music/audio) or 813 quadrillion short… Read more
