Monthly Newsletter
Late last week the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released its biannual report on landline wireless substitution in the United States. As expected, more and more consumers are cutting the landline cord, dropping traditional home phone service for a wireless alternative.
Overall, 17.5% of U.S. homes are wireless only— an increase of 1.7% since the second half of 2007. The largest cohort of wireless-only "household units" (any number of people, related or unrelated, living in a single dwelling) was unrelated roommates, with 63% of respondents in this category abandoning the landline, an increase of nearly 10% from the previous study.
Men are more likely than women to go wireless-only—18% and 14.4%, respectively. Further, adults living in the South and Midwest are more likely to have cut the landline cord than adults living in the Northeast and West. Adults who rent their homes were nearly three times as likely to be wireless-only when compared with adults who own their homes.
Not surprisingly, more young people are cutting the cord; nearly 36% of adults aged 25-29 live in wireless-only households, while 31% of 18-24 year-olds live in the same. These numbers taper off when passing the age of 30, though all age demographics still increased their wireless-only adoption over the previous study. This latest NCHS study spanned January to June 2008, and included responses from more than 30,000 adults and 11,000 minors less than 18 years of age.
UBS: Details emerge on Obama's $40B broadband stimulus
Jan 15, 2009 11:20 AM, By Ed Gubbins
President-Elect Barack Obama is likely to direct up to $40 billion in grants and loans toward improving broadband availability and speeds as part of broader economic stimulus efforts, according to UBS analysts.
In a research note this morning, UBS analysts said they expect Obama’s economic stimulus plan to include two main provisions for broadband: $5 billion to $10 billion in grants to expand broadband to unserved areas (at a minimum speed of 768 kilobits per second) and $30 billion in interest-free loans for boosting broadband speeds – to 50 megabits per second downstream and 20 Mb/s upstream for wireline networks and 10 Mb/s downstream, 2 Mb/s upstream for wireless networks.
A draft of the proposed $825-billion economic stimulus bill circulating on Capitol Hill today lists $6 billion for expanding broadband "so businesses in rural and other under served areas can link up to the global economy," adding, "For every dollar invested in broadband the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment."
The grant money will likely be used by telcos and municipalities to bring broadband to the 10% to 15% of American homes (about 13 million homes) that can’t get it today, UBS said, adding that this provision could well aid the job-creation goals of the larger economic stimulus effort.
The loans will likely be used to speed rollouts of 4G wireless, fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) and DOCSIS 3.0, rollouts major cable companies slowed last fall amid a broad slowdown in carrier purchasing
“While we would not expect AT&T to change its strategy, we believe Verizon could be more aggressive with its current FTTP rollout,” UBS analysts said.
In a presentation at an investor conference last week, Verizon Chief Executive Officer Ivan Seidenberg said the company would wait until next year, when it expects to reach its goal of passing 18 million homes with FTTP, to determine what to do next. At least one analyst expects Verizon to overbuild FTTP in adjacent areas outside its local service footprint.
At an industry event this week, Blair Levin, a key member of the Obama transition team, cautioned listeners not to confuse the broadband component of Obama’s economic stimulus plan – which is focused largely on rapid job creation – with Obama’s longer-term plans to address broadband availability, which will continue independently of the economic stimulus efforts he is expected to introduce as soon as possible once his term begins next week.
According to UBS, the equipment vendors best positioned to benefit from these broadband stimulus plans are Adtran and Arris, as they have the highest exposure to US capital spending. Other beneficiaries could include Ciena, Commscope, Juniper Networks and Tellabs to a lesser extent, UBS said. UBS does not expect cable operators to benefit much from the grants in the plan due to their already deep broadband penetration. But the loans for higher speeds could well spur many of them to follow Comcast in deploying DOCSIS 3.0 technology and push fiber closer to their customers.
In contrast, rural incumbents may benefit “to a small degree” from federal grants to extend broadband, UBS said, but they are unlikely to participate in the loans-for-speed program, given the harsh economics of FTTP in rural areas.
Because wireless operators such as Clearwire are likely to roll out 4G networks in already well-served urban areas, UBS doesn’t expect them to benefit much from the stimulus grants, either. To benefit from the loan program, UBS said, Clearwire in particular would need to re-engineer its network, more than doubling downstream speeds, in order to qualify.
“Given that Verizon’s FiOS network likely already meets the 50/20 Mb/s threshold currently proposed, we see Verizon as the largest beneficiary,” UBS said.
 Excerpts from video called Did You Know 3.0
It is a five minute video but has interesting statistics.
India has more Honor students that the United States has students.
The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.
We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist using technologies that haven’t been invented.
The US Department of labor estimated that todays student will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38.
It took 38 years to reach a market audience of 50 million with radio, 13 years with TV, 4 with the Internet and only 2 with Facebook.
