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Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2017
Telecomnews
Taking the emotional
temperature of
smartphone users,
Ericsson and Vodafone
find scant tolerance for
substandard service
In a project reported by Advanced
Television (London), Vodafone
Germany and the Swedish telecom
equipment and services company
Ericsson tapped neuroscience to
understand what mobile broadband
customers really think about poor
network performance. Electro-
encephalography (EEG) equipment
was used to monitor the brain activity
of 150 Vodafone subscriber-volunteers
in Düsseldorf. The result showed that
even small delays and disturbances
raise levels of tension and stress,
and have a negative impact on
subscriber loyalty and operator brand.
(“Research: Just One-Second Delay
Annoys Mobile Broadband Subs,”
21st February)
The smartphone users taking part in
the experiment were required to com-
plete 13 specific tasks in ten minutes,
while a hampering degradation in
quality-of-service was simulated. The
tasks included common actions such
as browsing web pages, streaming
videos and uploading “selfies”. In
addition to the EEG equipment,
eye-tracking gear and pulse meters
monitored the attention span and heart
rate of the participants.
To Guido Weißbrich, the director of
network performance at Vodafone
Germany, the joint study proves
how quickly smartphone users react
unfavourably when a broadband
network is not performing at its best.
He told Advanced Television that,
since a mere one-second delay when
downloading or uploading content
has a significant negative impact
on the user experience, “streaming
services must do everything to
avoid lengthy buffering or freezing of
content.”
Bradley Mead, who heads managed
services and network design and
optimisation at Ericsson’s Business
Unit Network Services, concurred.
Noting the potential of the new
“valuable data” for optimising and
engineering networks to maximise the
customer experience, he said, “It is
essential for operators to understand
how people actually feel about the
service they provide and how it really
impacts their day-to-day lives”.
Publishing a fifth voluntary
report on its taxes paid,
Vodafone seeks to
promote transparency
Vodafone is one of very few
multinational companies to make
non-compulsory disclosure, on a
country-by-country “actual cash
paid” basis, of its total contribution
to public finances, including details
and explanations of tax payments
and key taxation matters. In its most
recent report the London-based
telecom group also includes revenue
and profit before taxes. Published
on 20th February, this provides an
updated accounting of the year
ended 31st March 2016, including
direct and indirect cash taxes paid
by Vodafone in the countries in which
it does business, as well as such
non-taxation-based government rev-
enue contributions as spectrum fees.
Over that period, Vodafone reckons
its cash contribution to public
finances at more than $14.2 billion in
the group’s countries of operation,
compared with $11.6 billion in the
previous reporting period (2014-15).
The year-on-year increase was
attributed primarily to the results of
spectrum auctions in Germany and
India. The group paid $320 million in
direct taxes in the UK during 2015-16.
Vodafone noted that it has published
five tax transparency reports, on a
voluntary basis, since 2012. Its stated
purpose in doing so is to promote
greater understanding of the various
taxation systems, which it considers
“integral to increasing trust [among]
business, policy makers, and the
public.”
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
Ø The 2017 global edition of the
“Mobile Economy” report from
GSMA projects that the number of
unique mobile subscribers around
the world will surpass five billion
later this year, and will increase
to 5.7 billion by the end of the
decade. By that point, almost
three-quarters of the world’s
population will be subscribed to a
mobile service. Subscriber growth
over this period will be driven
primarily by large Asia markets
such as India, which alone is
forecast to add 310 million new
unique subscribers by 2020. The
London-based GSMA is a trade
body that represents some 800
mobile operators worldwide. Its
study, published on 28th February,
also highlights the on-going shift
to mobile broadband networks
and smartphones, and the mobile
industry’s growing contribution to
the global economy.
Ø JURIST, the public-service
website for legal news, on 17th
February took note of Dutch media
reports that the Netherlands has
proposed legislation to empower
its government to block or undo
mergers in the telecommunications
sector. According to a statement
from the Netherlands Ministry of
Economic Affairs, the industries
covered in the bill are in the category
“telephony and the Internet”: Internet
hubs, data centres, and hosting
and certification services, all of
which are deemed important for the
“continuity, reliability and safety of
services and infrastructure.” Minister
Henk Kamp stated the rationale for
the bill:
“Netherlands benefits from
the fact that we have an open
economy in which the market
is doing its job. So we take
more business abroad than the
other way about. Our country,
however, has not benefited from
takeovers by foreign companies
that are linked to criminal
activities, which are classified
as financially vulnerable or have
a non-transparent ownership
structure. Given the national
interests at stake, we lay a legal
basis for the telecommunications
sector in order to prevent such
takeovers”. Mr Kamp’s statement
also pointed out that the European
Union permits member-countries
to intervene in takeovers for
reasons of overriding public
interest, such as when national
security, public law and order, or
security and protection of vitally
important industrial sectors are at
stake.
The draft legislation has been
released to stakeholders for a
commentary period. Mr Kamp
hopes to present the bill to the
Council of State in the second
quarter of 2017, then to the House
of Representatives.