WCA March 2016

Telecom news

With 450 million unique mobile subscribers (representing 81 per cent of the population) forecast for Europe by 2020, there would appear to be limited room for subscriber growth. But Alex Sinclair, acting director general and chief technology officer at the GSMA, points out that Europe’s mobile operators have invested heavily in 4G over the past few years despite challenging macroeconomic and regulatory conditions. Expressing an expectation that investments in 4G deployments, capacity and spectrum will be sustained for the remainder of the decade, he told TelecomTV , “Mobile subscribers in Europe are now benefiting from download speeds that far exceed the global average and are taking advantage of a range of innovative new services made possible by next-generation networks and devices.” Ø As specific instances of mobile industry leadership in European digital innovation, Mr Sinclair cited areas such as mobile commerce, smart manufacturing, smart homes and smart health. Additionally, mobile networks are providing a platform for Internet of Things (IoT) opportunity. The number of cellular M2M connec- tions in Europe are forecast to grow from 68 million this year to 182 million by 2020, a 22 per cent CAGR (compound annual growth rate). The GSMA report also noted growing interest in Europe in the use of low-power wide-area (LPWA) solutions, which will play an important role in connecting a range of IoT devices. A modest proposed rate change is seen as boosting Canada’s economy even as it eases the tax burden on telecom providers The recent publication of a study by the Conference Board of Canada – an Ottawa-based independent, not-for-profit research organisation – reflects a growing awareness of the economic benefits to be expected from a flourishing telecom sector. The study, “From Landline to Mobile Broadband: Tax Drivers of Investment for Canada’s Telecom Industry”, was produced for the board’s Centre on Tax Analysis, Fiscal Incentives and

On 16 th December an apparently disaffected user of cable services caused the evacuation of a Comcast call centre in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, following a bomb threat. As reported by Daniel Frankel of FierceCable , the police response to a Comcast employee’s discovery of “a suspicious note” kept the building empty for half a day. The incident was the latest in a sporadic but worrying series in the USA. Also last year, in March, a woman was accused of threatening to blow up a local Time Warner Cable facility in Lincoln, Nebraska, after she was allegedly stood up for an appointment. In another episode cited by Mr Frankel, in July 2014 a man was indicted for making a bomb threat to a local Comcast facility in Quincy, Massachusetts. Going back further, in July 2012 police in Duluth, Minnesota, said that a man “upset over his Internet service” was arrested for threatening to “blow up and burn” a Charter Communications payment centre. “If one were to judge based on surveys of the American consumer, Comcast and other cable companies are regarded more or less as the bane of everyone’s existence,” wrote Michael Tanenbaum of PhillyVoice (12 th December). Speaking at the 2015 Business Insider annual conference held in New York in December, CEO Brian Roberts of Philadelphia-based Comcast acknowledged that cable companies are held in low regard and shared his views on why this should be so. Perhaps betraying a hint of grievance, Mr Roberts pointed out that the global cable industry has grown an average eight per cent to 12 per cent a year over the past decade, and noted that Comcast alone spends some $13 billion to $14 billion a year on procuring content for its subscribers. Google is free, Facebook is free, Mr Roberts reminded the industry executives gathered in New York. If Comcast is not, there is a reason for that: “Every movie star. Every athlete. Every possible piece of content – we pay.” Even so, he said, “If you drop a channel, you’re incredibly unpopular. If you pass along a rate increase, you’re incredibly unpopular.” Then, adding perceived insult to injury, the company commits what Mr Roberts calls “foot faults”: the technician on a house call doesn’t show up on time; or the remedy doesn’t fix the problem. This, in the opinion of the head of the largest cable company in the world by revenue, is “the essence” of the public relations problem of cable service providers. Widely disliked, American cable companies find that some angry customers are inclined to act out their grievances

BigStockPhoto.com • Photographer: Krishnacreations

Already a highly mature region for mobile, Europe is set to see further benefits from investment and advances in 4G technology According to “The Mobile Economy: Europe 2015”, a new report from the GSMA, the contribution to European GDP by the mobile industry is set to increase over the next five years on the back of increasing mobile operator investment in 4G networks and services. The association of some 800 mobile operators worldwide forecasts that the contribution will increase from €500 billion in 2014 to €600 billion by 2020, as markets across the region benefit from improvements in productivity and efficiency.

As reviewed on 3 rd December by TelecomTV , also London-based, the GSMA expects these advances to be brought about by the adoption of new mobile technologies that include machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. On-going mobile operator investment in 4G network quality and coverage across Europe will, it predicts, see 4G accounting for 60 per cent of the continent’s mobile connections by 2020, up from 20 per cent today. The GSMA outlook is the more remarkable in light of the already very high European mobile subscriber levels. The estimate of 430 million unique subscribers at the end of 2015, representing 79 per cent of the population, makes Europe the most highly penetrated mobile region in the world – nearly ten percentage points ahead of North America.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2016

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