Tech Untangled - Information at the intersection of Technology and Business

T-Mobile USA has launched a wired phone service for $10 a month, plus taxes and fees, to its wireless subscribers in the Seattle and Dallas-Fort Worth areas. The service, called “Talk Forever Home Phone”, comes with unlimited local and domestic long distance calls. This is a VoIP service that runs over a broadband connection, and in that sense, it is similar to VoIP offerings from the likes of Vonage. Talk Forever Home Phone will likely be available nationally in a few months. It works via a special Wi-Fi wireless router that you must buy, with a two-year contract, for a $50 one-time fee . The router has two phone jacks to connect 2 standard corded or cordless phones. The router can either replace or supplement your existing wireless router and connects to the T-Mobile cellphone network. No other hardware is required from T-Mobile (e.g. you can use your own cordless or corded phones with it).Talk Forever customers must be on a T-Mobile individual plan costing at least $39.99/monthor a family plan costing at least $49.99/month.Talk Forever Home Phone has some significant downsides. It doesn’t support faxes, home-security systems and other devices that rely on dial-up modems. Also, unlike in POTS phones, your home address is not automatically transmitted to 911 emergency centers - the customer has to manually supply that address to T-Mobile during signup (and then change it whenever the address changes). This issue exists with any residential VoIP service. Cord-cutters can transfer their landline phone number to this new service, but it cannot be shared with the T-Mobile cellphone number. Also, the cell phones addressbook doesn’t transfer to the home phone (after all, addressbooks are generally local to the cellular handset).

This is similar to T-Mobile’s HotSpot AtHome program, which allows subscribers to place calls over their broadband connection using special Wi-Fi-equipped cell phones. The difference is that HotSpot AtHome uses the cell phone, while this Talk Forever Home Phone works with any standards corded or cordless phone. In both cases, T-Mobile is trying to get more people to give up their traditional landlines, but the new plan allows them to keep the familiar home phones as well as the home number.

Again the biggest losers out here will be pure-play VoIP providers such as Vonage! Not that there’s a complete overlap, but T-Mobile is positioning itself to carve out a chunk of Vonage’s customer base. This is waaaay cheaper than Vonage (doesn’t have all the features of Vonage, though) and will provide a better value proposition for those looking for cheap home service AND a mobile solution (users will have one bill for both at home and on-the-go voice service). Plus T-Mobile can market this cheaper than Vonage can because it already has a bigger customer base.

No doubt that this will be another nail in Vonage’s coffin - Vonage will now have to work even harder to survive

Verizon Wireless introduced an unlimited calling plan for $99.99 a month on last week. Verizon Wireless is the first major carrier to make an “unlimited” plan available nationwide with no domestic roaming or long-distance fees. At that time, it must have seemed like a good plan to upsell subscribers to “move up” to the unlimited level, including possibly getting new customers from the other cellular carriers, and to create some extra ‘buzz’.

However, not even a mere five hours had gone by when AT&T announced its own unlimited plan. Three hours later, T-Mobile announced its own unlimited $99.99 a month plan, which even included unlimited text and picture messaging, which otherwise costs an extra $14.99 per month when added to other T-Mobile plans. In the end, only Sprint Nextel hadn’t announced a matching plan, and the stock price of all U.S. mobile carriers had taken a dip.

This is far from a historic day in Wireless. This is merely putting a cap on the high end charge. Given that wireless carriers have a monthly ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) of around $50, it is clear that only a small percentage of customers subscribe to these high-end plans. Of course, one could expect more customers to move to the new unlimited plan, but even that would still be a small number. However, for those high end users, this will increase the rate at which they cut the cord and use cellular exclusively for their voice communication needs.

So why did the stock prices of dip so much?

Curiously missing from this picture is Sprint Nextel. Sprint has been trialling an unlimited plan for $119.99 a month (includes unlimited Web use, e-mail and messaging) in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Tampa, and parts of Northern California and Western Nevada since May 2007. Sprint is looking at how well the offer is doing in the trial areas, and unfortunately for Sprint, this ‘looking’ has been mooted by the other 3 rivals. Given the recent customer losses and with no apparent advantage over AT&T and Verizon Wireless, Sprint will likely have to offer a cheaper plan, to stem the defection of customers. The dip in the stock price probably implies that Sprint will undercut very aggressively and that AT&T and Verizon will eventually be forced to respond. Rumors are that Sprint will undercut its rivals with a flat-rate calling plans that is as low as $60 a month. If AT&T or Verizon are forced to match a $60 to $80 plan, it can significantly cut industry-wide revenues and potentially sets a dangerous precedent towards downward spiraling price plans.

One way or the other, the actions by AT&T and T-Mobile show that nifty price plans no longer provide an advantage to any carrier. So why was this done in the first place?

Perhaps Verizon Wireless wanted to pre-empt a price cut by Sprint. Or perhaps it was a plan to kill-off Sprint Nextel. After all, Sprint is struggling and what better time to attack it than while its down!!! But now it may find itself in a downward spiraling pricing game that the industry is ill-designed to match. Nonetheless, if anyone is able to withstand price-cuts, it must be Verizon Wireless, because it has the higher margins that both Sprint Nextel and AT&T.

The cellular market in India is growing rapidly. In 2007 alone the Indian cellular added more than 80 million cellular subscriptions. By end of 2008, India will have more than 300 million cellular customers, according to estimates by Wireless Intelligence. In comparison, the USA is expected to have 270 million customers by the end of 2008. At this level, India will surpass USA to become the 2nd largest cellular market by subscribers after China. In the 1Q 2008, India is forecasted to have 250 million cellular subscribers, which will be on par with the total cellular connections in the USA. To meet this mark, the Indian cellular market with grow 57% year-on-year in Q1 2008, the same growth seen in Q4 2007. India’s cellular penetration will be more than 20% in early 2008. In comparison, China’s cellular base grew by approximately 18% over the same period, but will have 40% market penetration in early 2008.

This continued growth is facilitated mostly by providing cellular service in rural areas, where penetration rates are extremely low (6% in April 2007, according to TRAI). However, providing cellular to the rural masses will also mean charging less, because in rural areas affordability and willingness to pay are lower. This also means that cellular carriers must find ways to reduce their costs, in order to maintain profit levels. As a result, Indus Towers has been formed by Vodafone Essar, Bharti and Idea Cellular to share 70,000 cellular towers units in India, which will reduce OPEX and CAPEX and improve coverage in rural areas.

The figure below shows the number of cellular subscribers and penetration levels 2005-2010 ( courtesy of Wireless Intelligence)

India has ten GSM networks and six CDMA2000 1X networks. In 2007, GSM networks account for about 75% of total subscribers and grew more than 60% year on year. GSM subscribers are expected to pass 180 million in Q1 2008. In 2007, CDMA2000 1X connections grew by around 54% and is expected to have 65 million subscribers in Q1 2008. CDMA2000 networks are restrained by the limited availability of handsets, compared to a wide range of entry level GSM handsets.

AT&T Mobility says it will step up its 3G buildout, expanding its high-speed mobile service to more than 80 additional cities in 2008. The planned expansion will provide AT&T 3rd generation (3G) high-speed data services to nearly 350 leading U.S. markets by the end of 2008, including all of the top 100 U.S. cities. The initiative will entail rolling out 1,500+ additional cell sites in the U.S. The AT&T 3G network now delivers downlink (download) speeds between 600 and 1,400 Kilobits per second (Kbps) and uplink (upload) speeds between 500 and 800 Kbps.

AT&T also plans to complete the deployment of High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) by the middle of 2008. HSUPA provides higher uplink speeds and is the next step in the evolution of AT&T’s 3G network that will the transition to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) standards. With this change, AT&T will catch up to Verizon and Sprint in terms of high speed wireless coverage. In fact, AT&T may even have faster uploads with HSUPA than Verizon or Sprint has with their EV-DO Rev A network.

Currently, there are multiple 3G technologies used by different wireless carriers in the U.S. AT&T uses HSPA that is based on W-CDMA technology, while Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, and U.S. Cellular, use CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology. Sprint is also building another high-speed wireless network based on WiMAX, which was recently classified as a 3G technology. For 4th generation (4G) services, AT&T will use a technology named Long Term Evolution (LTE), a 4th generation technology that is still in the ‘development’ stage. Verizon too has announced that it will use LTE as its 4G technology, which will align it closely with its half-parent Vodafone, which mainly operates in Europe and Asia.