FCC to Approve Qwest Communications and CenturyLink Merger: [17th Mar 2011]

The FCC are thought to be close to approving a merger between Qwest Communications International Inc and CenturyLink Inc. The merger has been given a list of conditions which have to be met to ensure approval, however these are limited and are mostly voluntary. These include offering a timetable for upgrading subscriber broadband speeds and offering a discounted service to low income households. There would also be a limit to how much federal subsidy the company would be able to get. Any other conditions are thought to be modest and will not interfere with the merger. It is thought that final clearance will be gained by the end of this month.


After just over one month of availability on the Verizon network, the market share of the iPhone business which is held by the provider has increased to 12.4%. This means that one out of every eight iPhones in the US is being run on a Verizon network. These statistics come from mobile analytics company Chitika who have been keeping a tally of how many iPhones have been running on both Verizon and AT&T networks. Experts are questioning if the momentum can be kept up for the next 30 days.


It has been confirmed this week that AT&T will be implementing a 150GB monthly usage cap for all DSL customers and a 250GB cap for all U-Verse customers starting from the beginning of May. Customers will be receiving letters from AT&T to explain the changes from now until the end of the month. This will mean a change to the terms and conditions of contracts. The caps will also include overage charges, but these will only be implemented for those who consistently go over the cap. Those who exceed the cap three times during the entire contract (not per month) will pay an overage charge which will be $10 for every 50GB over the limit. AT&T say these charges will only affect 2% of their customers who use more than their share of bandwidth. Customers will be notified if they are coming up to their data limit each month and tools will be provided to allow them to keep up to date.


A study conducted by AT&T has discovered that Miami is number one when it comes to being wireless technology savvy. Each of the US markets were rated according to the perceived importance of wireless Internet, the use of the technology, the use of mobile applications and the number of employees who use the wireless networks to work away from the office. The results found that Miami came in ahead of Atlanta, San Diego, Dallas and San Francisco. It was found that in Miami 60% of businesses felt that smartphones were important to their business and 37% said they could not be in business without wireless technology. Miami also came in high on the scale when it came to the importance of video and television services with 42% compared to an average of 24% elsewhere.


New data from NPD has indicated that Netflix now owns more than 60% of the digital movie market having risen to these heights in a relatively small amount of time. Comcast have just 8% of the market and DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Apple share third place with 4%. NPD say that most of the at home revenue still comes from sales of DVDs but more customers are saying that the immediacy of streaming is the reason they choose it. Perhaps it is in response to the fact that Netflix is gaining hold on this market that Hollywood is increasingly complaining about their power. It has been suggested that Netflix may become the Apple of movie downloads. Hollywood has tried to get Netflix to delay their releases of a new movies by 30 days, but this has not affected their growth. Netflix have also been questioning the use of data throttling which affects their business.