Blog | News & Information on Wireless Services & Telecommunications
Posted: 06/03/11 by Mobile Future Team
The fifth annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast (2010-2015) was released this week and the analysis points to the extreme growth in global data traffic in coming years. The Forecast examined growth generated from a wide-range of areas including mobile devices, video use and internet application adoption.
Some key findings from the report include:
- By 2015 there will be 15 billion connected devices
- Between 2010 and 2015, global mobile data traffic will increase 26 times
- Traffic generated by wireless devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2015
- One million minutes of video content will cross the network every second in 2015
To learn more, click here.
Posted: 05/18/11 by Mobile Future Team
Our nation has an extraordinary appetite for wireless products, data, and services across a dizzying array of applications and devices. The massive growth of internet mobility, however, is quickly exceeding the available wireless spectrum, the invisible infrastructure that powers the mobile ecosystem.
We at Mobile Future have outlined the serious impacts sharply increasing data consumption will have on networks if additional wireless spectrum is not made available soon in this Spectrum: Fueling the Mobile Future Video.
Key highlights from the video include:
- By 2012, more than half of all new phones purchased will be smartphones.
- A smartphone uses 24x more spectrum than a feature phone. An iPad uses 120x more.
- By 2014, 70% of all consumer electronics will be wirelessly connected to the Internet.
- If we don’t allocate more spectrum for mobile, our nation’s appetite for wireless will out-strip capacity as early as 2014.
To watch the video, go here.
Posted: 03/03/11 by Mobile Future Team
A few new stats caught our eye this week:
- Smartphones outsold PC’s.
- According to IDC, in the fourth quarter of 2010 100.9 million smartphone devices were shipped compared to 92.1 million PC units.
- Mobile app revenues projected to reach $38 billion by 2015.
- Forrester Research analysts also estimate that by 2015 mobile applications, services and business management revenues will reach $54.6 billion a year.
- By 2015, e-commerce is expected to reach $278.9 billion in the United States according to Forrester.
Posted: 02/14/11 by Jonathan Spalter
President Obama made a powerful, affirming speech to the innovation community at Northern Michigan University, laying out a bold roadmap for how he plans to achieve his goal to connect virtually all Americans to the wireless Internet in the next five years.
President Obama made clear that it's not government alone -- or even foremost -- that will connect a mobile nation. Companies large and small continue to make the capital investment and commit the resources that put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work laying the pipes and building the towers of the nation's next information frontier. From the garages of Silicon Valley to the corporate and academic technology labs, innovators are competing fiercely to create the next exciting breakthrough.
In his remarks, the President acknowledged that this profound innovation and growth is the key to future prosperity for our nation, and is yielding results both for consumers and for the economy.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has long (and rightly) evangelized on the merits of fact-based, data-driven policymaking. And the facts are that choice and competition define every corner of the modern mobile marketplace. Two-thirds of Americans can choose from among five or more wireless providers. The device market could not be more hotly contested right now. Consumers can add mobile Internet to their voice service for as little as $15 a month. And, they tell the FCC in no uncertain terms that they are satisfied with their wireless services with a 92% customer satisfaction rating.
With his focus on the mobile Internet, President Obama is building from a strong base. Six out of 10 Americans now use a wireless device to access the Internet. As early as 2014, more people may go online via mobile devices than PCs. And, if the priority is digital inclusion, President Obama has squarely hit his mark. Roughly two-thirds of African-Americans and Latinos are wireless Internet users -- and one in three connect daily. Even low-income Americans are finding cost-effective ways to access the mobile web, showing an 8% growth in wireless Internet use this past year.
All of these trends clearly indicate the intensity of competition and the value it delivers every day to a diverse array of Americans. The task for government now should be to encourage this progress -- both in word and in deed -- and do what is necessary to promote investment and growth for mobile and other innovation sectors.
The President gets it. Last month, he ordered a sweeping review of federal regulations with an eye toward easing undue burdens "that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs." If ever there was a poster-child for the profound expansion and job creation such a perspective could trigger, it is the jaw-dropping growth and innovation we have all borne witness too in recent years with wireless. From day one, Congress made the decision to let a competitive dynamic guide the marketplace. They showed rightful restraint, and we all are the beneficiaries of that decision.
As President Obama works to ensure a constructive government climate for economic growth, he's right to focus early, significant attention on wireless. In the toughest economic times the nation has seen in decades, broadband innovators -- including wireless -- have led private capital investment in the U.S. economy. Only the history books will know what true progress comes from this initiative. But if the President's wireless program is successful, one of its greatest innovations won't be a hip device or cool app, but a powerful new model for forward-looking policy in this country that unites the interests of consumers, innovators and our economy, so we can grow as we should -- together.
This article was originally published on Huffington Post.
Posted: 12/07/10 by Mobile Future Team
Mobile apps handle just about everything these days: entertainment, scheduling, home monitoring, cloud computing. But until today, few would suggest that mobile apps are a matter of life and death.
Not anymore. Last week, Eric Cooper, a basketball coach at La Verne Lutheran High School in California, downloaded a $1.99 mobile app that offers CPR instruction.
His timing could not have been better. This week, according to the Los Angeles Times, his star center-- who has a heart condition that causes irregular pumping of the blood-- collapsed on the court. Using CPR tips from the app, Coach Cooper was able to revive the player and keep his heart beating until paramedics arrived.
We’ve written previously about how mobile apps are revolutionizing our lives, especially in healthcare. Mobile technology is making healthcare more accessible and affordable. And whether the technology is a smartphone app or a more complex monitoring system for a home-bound senior, mobile’s potential to save lives is amazing.
Posted: 10/28/10 by Mobile Future Team
If you want to appreciate the extent of the mobile industry's benefit to today's economy, then all you need to read is the first sentence from this Wall Street Journal article:
"If there's one group of companies that isn't tied down by the slack economy, it's those that supply the wiring, chips, and services related to mobile Internet."
That's no accident. It's the result of billions in capital investment that mobile carriers are pouring into the economy. Even during the current economic difficulties, as Merrill Lynch reported this August, for the past three quarters, the national wireless carriers have ramped up their annual capital expenses by anywhere from 6 to 23 percent.
Posted: 10/21/10 by Mobile Future Team
Today, the FCC held a Spectrum Summit aimed at addressing the looming spectrum crunch by discussing novel approaches to meet the ever-growing demand for capacity across wireless networks. Key issues at the summit included formulating a spectrum inventory, incentive auctions, and the need for more robust spectrum management and flexibility. To read more information about the Spectrum Summit and to read the FCC’s recently released report, “Mobile Broadband: The Benefits of Additional Spectrum,” click here.
Posted: 08/05/10 by Mobile Future Team
Gone are the days when forgetting your cell phone was an insurmountable crisis. This faux-problem has been reduced to the now ubiquitous phrase, “There’s an app for that”. The app du-jour is from Vonage and allows users to call their facebook friends for free using the iPhone, Android devices, iPod touch and, in a few weeks, even the iPad. Users can contact any of their Facebook friends provided that both people have downloaded the app.
Concerned about getting a call from facebook “friends” you don’t actually know? A call-block feature is set to be added in future updates. Also in the future, Vonage plans to bring the app to Blackberry users and to add an SMS (texting) service!
Posted: 07/27/10 by Mobile Future Team
Birthdays and anniversaries are inherently times of reflection and celebration. Which is most likely why Mashable, a news site celebrating its 5th birthday this year, decided to take a quick jaunt down memory lane to show us just how far mobile technology has come over the last half-decade.
Suffice it to say that if the majority of human relationships were as successful as that of consumers and the wireless industry, the markets for chick-flicks and online dating may cease to exist-- because this romance is nothing short of a fairy tale.
The expansive and swift proliferation of mobile broadband. The shift from feature-based flip phones to smart mobile devices operated over user-friendly interfaces like the touchscreen. The real-time social capabilities offered through new media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The emergence of apps for, well, just about everything.
And thankfully, there is no end in sight for this climate of consumer-driven innovation. We appreciate Mashable for highlighting how wireless continues to serve as a true American success story, and, as always, we look forward to exploring new unchartered horizons in our mobile future.
Posted: 07/23/10 by Advisor
The Pew Internet and American Life Project just released a survey that found that six out of 10 Americans rely on wireless technology a mobile phone or laptop to access the Internet. Among the particularly compelling findings: English-speaking Hispanics and African Americans are leading the way in mobile connectivity and using wireless as their on ramp to the Internet.
The survey determined that 87 percent of English-speaking Hispanics in the U.S. own a cell phone, compared with 80 percent of whites. And 53 percent of these Hispanics access the Internet from their mobile phones. Hispanics also lead in their use of mobile data applications, including: taking pictures, sending and receiving text messages, accessing the Internet, sending and receiving e-mail, watching videos and using social networking sites.
I am proud our community is leading the way in wireless usage and am excited to see how this adoption can help bolster the community as a whole — from entrepreneurial opportunities and improving health care to educational development and greater public safety.
In fact, the Pew study reinforces many of the findings from a 2009 in-depth report released by the Hispanic Institute and Mobile Future examining mobile broadband's impact on the Hispanic community.
The study, "Hispanic Broadband Access: Making the Most of the Mobile, Connected Future," illustrates how advancements in wireless broadband are democratizing educational and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Hispanics traditionally have lagged behind other groups in adopting broadband connections at home. But that's clearly not the case with wireless. While the Hispanic community is growing at a rapid pace, the wireless sector is evolving just as quickly. With opportunities and products emerging daily, consumers are able to select what's best for them from a vast selection of plans, applications and services.
But this didn't happen by accident. The wireless sector has grown tremendously in a short period of time because policy makers wisely set a light touch framework that put consumers in charge of the market and encouraged investment, innovation and growth. This led to increased research and development for cutting-edge wireless services and vibrant wireless networks connecting countless communities like ours that otherwise might have been left behind.
This year, the Federal Communications Commission released an ambitious National Broadband Plan to help ensure that no one ends up on the wrong side of the digital divide. The FCC set a terrific goal, but in order to meet its objectives, regulators must avoid imposing any rules that could deter the growth and innovation we see in wireless, including trying to regulate the Internet through so-called Net neutrality rules or attempting to micro-manage the highly competitive wireless sector.
By maintaining the current light-touch regulatory approach, wireless technology investors and innovators will continue to be spurred by robust market opportunities and healthy competition.
The result? A consumer-driven industry that is narrowing the gap by offering new cutting-edge products and services to millions of mobile subscribers.
Today's wireless sector is connecting American consumers in ways we never dreamed possible. But putting rules in place that could stifle this vibrant sector would be counterproductive, and in today's challenging economy, this is a gamble that neither Main Street nor Wall Street can afford to lose.
The article was orginially published in The Statesman.
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Tags: Consumer Awareness, Innovation, Mobile Broadband, News, Smartphone, Spectrum, Wireless Devices, Wireless Innovation, Looming Spectrum Crisis