Most So-Called Unlimited Services are Capped: [5th May 2011]

A study carried out at multichannel News has found that 56% of all of the US is under a broadband capping system of some description. With AT&T announcing their capping system this week and the fact that they have a huge proportion of customers in the US, the numbers have just increased dramatically. ISPs have claimed that most of their customers do not go over their caps, but the researchers point out that with new services such as the cloud and video streaming, these caps are likely to be less than required.

AT&T have claimed that the data caps they have placed on their broadband connections are what the customer has asked for and that they are very generous. The provider has suggested that their customers believe that those who consume more should pay extra for it. Mark Siegel from AT&T has commented that the change was based on customer feedback. However experts are questioning how they came about this response as the majority of people are unlikely to accept capping as a good idea. The caps came in this week and limits customers to 150GB for DSL users and 250GB for those on uVerse. While these figures may seem high it has been pointed out that downloading movies from a company like Netflix could use it up very quickly.

It has been revealed that the Justice Department will be conducting an in-depth review of the AT&T/T-Mobile takeover. The department has two choices when it comes to mergers of this type and can either approve it within 30 days or it can decide to investigate it more fully. The latter is what they are going to do in this case. The FCC will also have to sign off the deal before it can go ahead. Sprint have also objected to the deal and would like the FCC to examine the merger in light of the AT&T purchase of spectrum from Qualcomm.

AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have all agreed not to set up a separate network for transactions done by phones. It has been suggested that it would be too time consuming and too difficult to achieve. The venture known as Isis would have required the technology to be embedded in phones to allow mobiles to be used in payment at stores. A payments network would have to be set up. Rather than do this they have now opted to work with Visa and Mastercard to to share account information and store it on phones. This would still allow the phone to be used in payment, but would limit the overall scope of the scheme.

Clearwire have released their earnings report and it seems that they have seen their revenue double to $242 million, however they have reported a net loss of $227 million. However when it comes to subscribers they have been improving with around 1.6 million new wholesale customers and 155,000 retail subscribers. In total the end of the first quarter saw Clearwire with 6.1 million total broadband subscribers and they expect this figure to reach 9 million by the end of the year. They have also made it clear that they do not intend on selling an spectrum this year as they now have enough cash to carry on trading without doing so.

It has been estimated by Park Associates that by the middle of this year multi-screen service TV Everywhere, will be available to 81% of subscribers in North America. The research company has said that TV service providers have moved forward very quickly with the concept in a bid to attract younger subscribers. The report also found that 40% of broadband users aged 18 to 34 think that TV Everywhere is appealing. Brett Sappington from Park Associates has commented that operators from all sectors are now offering TV services and many are making it available from smartphones and tablets. He says that providers are making sure the consumer sees them as their primary source of video content.