Micropayments

This article is interesting. There have been numerous schemes over the years that have been designed to facilitate micropayments, but none of them have taken off.
Quoting the article:

Amid the disdain, and without many people noticing, micropayments have arrived — just not in the way they were originally envisioned. The 99 cents you pay for a song on iTunes is a micropayment. So are the tiny amounts that some operators of small Web sites earn whenever someone clicks on the ads on their pages. Some stock-photography companies sell pictures for as little as $1 each.

“Micropayments are here,” said Benjamin M. Compaine, a consultant and lecturer at Northeastern University who specializes in media economics, “they just have not evolved in the way that everybody expected.”

Why do you think they have "not evolved in a way that everyone expected"? Do you think micropayments will continue on their present trajectory, or do you see big changes coming?

Telecoms, taxes and growth in Uganda

I found this item interesting. Many studies of telecoms adoption, penetration and growth focus on industrialized countries, so it is nice to see a thorough analysis of telecoms in a developing country, such as Uganda. Also, this study clearly shows that people respond to prices and taxes in their consumption and use. In many cases, high taxes on telecoms are justified because they are thought to be either "luxuries" or business-oriented, which are thought to be more able to afford higher taxes. This report would seem to suggest that there are unintended consequences of that view.

2007 OFCOM Communications Review

The British regulator OFCOM released its 2007 review. The report is worth reading ... here are a few of the report's key points:

• The availability of broadband to more than half of UK households has driven the development of converged services and devices.
• Convergence has opened up major revenue opportunities for the producers of many content types. Over the first half of 2007 90% of UK singles sales by volume came from digital downloads to the computer or a mobile handset. The market for computer game playing has also been transformed, with millions of consumers worldwide now engaging in shared online gaming experiences.
• Audiovisual content, by contrast, continues to be largely broadcaster-funded, although independent producer revenue from new media rights more than doubled to £42m in 2006.
• The traditional advertiser-funded model of broadcast audiovisual output faces pressures both from the growing popularity of online advertising (it rose by nearly half in 2006 to £2bn) and from the multichannels (which attracted advertising revenue of over £1bn in 2006).
• Increasingly sophisticated devices are beginning to influence consumer behaviour. Fifteen percent of individuals now have a digital video recorder (DVR) and up to 78% of adults who own them say they always, or almost always, fast-forward through the adverts when watching recorded programmes.
• Bundled communications services are increasingly popular with consumers, with 40% of households now taking more than one communications service from the same provider (up a third on last year). A majority of broadband customers take it as part of a bundle.
• Each person now consumes more than seven hours of media and communications services cumulatively per day. However, the tendency to consume some media simultaneously means that the actual time spent on media is likely to be less than this.
• Digital television penetration broke through the 80% barrier in Q1 2007, taking the total number of homes with multichannel television to 20.4 million (80.5% of the total).
• Radio reach has been stable over the last five years at around 90%. However, total listening hours fell by 1.4% in the year to Q1 2007, and are down 4.0% on five years ago. Listening hours have fallen furthest among 25-34 year olds, down by 17.3% over five years, and among children, down 8.7%. However, the over-55’s are now listening to more radio, with hours up by 5.5%.
• Some 58% of listeners say they have accessed radio through one of the digital platforms (up seven percentage points on last year); 41% have listened via DTV, 24% over the internet, and 8% via mobile phone. Twenty seven per cent of UK adults now own an MP3 player, with 5% using them to listen to radio podcasts.
• Average household spend on telecoms services fell by nearly a pound in 2006 to £64.73 per month. For the first time, average mobile spend fell (by 70p to £31.72) as falling prices more than compensated for an increase in the total number of connections and in the average number of voice calls and text messages per subscriber. Like-for-like prices (based on a basket of services with average usage at 2006 levels) fell by nearly 9%.
• Total industry revenue in 2006 was £47.0bn, of which £38.5bn was retail revenue (i.e. revenue from end-users). This was an increase of 1.4% on 2005 but represents significantly slower growth than the previous five years as fixed-line revenues declined and growth in mobile and broadband revenues slowed.
• More than half of UK households had broadband by March 2007. The average (blended) headline speed in June 2007 was 4.6Mbit/s, although actual speeds experienced are often considerably lower, varying according to the quality and length of line from premises to exchange and the number of simultaneous users.
• Households with a mobile connection (93%) exceeded households with a fixed connection (90%) for the first time in 2006. Average calls per mobile connection rose above 100 minutes a month for the first time, while average calls per fixed-line connection fell below 300 minutes.
• Local loop unbundling accelerated through 2006 so that by the end of March 2007, 72% of UK premises were connected to an unbundled exchange (an increase from 45% in March 2006). The proportion of premises in unbundled areas taking LLU services rose from 3% in March 2006 to 9% in March 2007.
  
• Analysis of time spent online reveals that Britain is a nation of shoppers and social networkers. More time was spent on eBay than on any other web site, and social networking sites Bebo, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube are all in the top ten sites by time spent.
• Women aged 25-34 spend over 20% more time online than their male counterparts. ‘Silver surfers’ also account for an increasing amount of internet use with nearly 30% of total time spent on the internet accounted for by over-50s (although, as over-50s account for 41% of the UK population, their internet usage remains significantly lower than average).

How many of these facts and trends are unique to the UK? What are the implications of these trends for regulatory policy and the strategies of the firms in the marketplace? Are consumers better or worse off, on balance? Are social goals (eg. universal service) being met?

Municipal WiFi

I have blogged about municipal wifi networks before. I have been a bit skeptical about these networks from the beginning. Recent articles, such as this one in BusinessWeek add credibility to my skepticism. I have a paper in the upcoming Telecommunications Policy Research Conference with Kevin Huang on this topic.

Do you see a role for muni wifi networks? What would that be? Should this be left to the private sector?

DVD Wars again

The next generation DVD format war has been a persistent theme on this blog, given my longstanding interest in standards processes. This format war is far from over, though this story has given the HD-DVD camp renewed momentum.

Given that the penetration of HD television sets is still relatively small (and the penetration of HD-capable players even smaller), this is clearly not about profitability.

What matters in this war? Price of players? The Sony PS-3 (even though its sales are languishing)? Availability of movies?

Update (2007-08-30): Take a look at this article over at CNET. How much of a difference will this make? If many consumers are enticed by this and purchase it, will that drive the Blu-Ray only studios to provide HD-DVD content? Or, will consumers shun this inexpensive device because of the division in content?

Update (2007-08-31): Do you think the points raised in this article, if true, will make a significant difference?

Update (2007-09-07): I found this commentary illuminating ... and there was a small bit of data included, instead of only announcements that amount to posturing.