Verizon averaged 14.3 Mbps down and 8.5 Mbps up, according to Root’s new report, but what it lacked in raw speed, Verizon made up for in coverage. Of the 77 markets in which Root performed its own measurements, Verizon had an LTE network up in every one. Meanwhile AT&T’s 4G service was present in only 47 of the 77 at the time Root performed its tests last year. These maps, compiled from Root’s crowdsourced data, show just how far Verizon’s LTE network reaches compared to AT&T and Sprint:

What’s more, Verizon’s coverage within its LTE footprint was much more consistent. When in a Verizon LTE market Root testers found themselves connected to a Verizon LTE signal 93.2 percent of the time, while for AT&T the number was 81.7 percent. We’ve started to see that trend in Root’s city-specific reports: Big Red is reaching further into the suburban and exurban regions of its launch markets than Ma Bell.

But AT&T was quick to point that it has added many more cities since Root compiled its data (Root measured different markets at different times in the second half of 2012). Of the 30 cities where Root found no LTE network, AT&T has since launched networks in 26 of them, AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom said.

Root’s most recent results for New York City, where AT&T boasts the fastest LTE connections.

Sprint only started its LTE rollout last summer so it’s still far behind AT&T and Verizon. Root’s staggered testing regime found LTE networks in only five of the 77 markets measured last year and in even in those five markets it caught an LTE signal only half the time. When Root did find LTE, Sprint averaged 10.3 Mbps down and 4.4 Mbps up. Sprint’s speeds are generally lower because it is using half the spectrum for LTE that AT&T and Verizon are tapping for their rollouts.

T-Mobile won’t launch LTE until later this year, but Root did measure its HSPA+ network performance. T-Mobile averaged 7.3 Mbps on the downlink and 1.5 Mbps on the uplink.

RootMetrics uses both crowdsourced data — drawn from smartphones loaded with its CoverageMap iPhone and Android apps — and professional testing conducted both in vehicles and indoors (For a detailed look at Root’s methodology, check out our video of a recent Root test in Chicago). Root is also working with GigaOM this week at SXSW in Austin to measure the impact that a large conference of mobile savvy users has on city’s mobile data networks.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated T-Mobile’s LTE network will launch next year. T-Mobile’s 4G network will actually go live later this year.

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That may not seem like a huge amount, but it’s spread out over the entire world’s population, including parts of the world where 3G connections are still rare and smartphone uptake negligible. When broken down by region, the numbers really pop. Cisco found the typical North American accounted for 752 MBs a month, while Western Europeans ate up a monthly average of 491 MBs.

In total, devices with mobile connections generated 900 petabytes of traffic (a petabyte being 1 million GBs) each month in 2012. And we ain’t seen nothing yet. Cisco is projecting global mobile traffic will grow at compounded annual rate of 66 percent for the next five years, doubling 13 times by 2017. This year, monthly mobile traffic will enter the exabyte era (an exabyte being 1 billion GBs). By 2017 global mobile users will eat up 11.2 EBs each month, according to the VNI.

Cisco is tracking the culmination of many trends. Not only are the number of smartphones and tablets increasing, but more devices from cameras to cars are getting connected. The average data usage per device is on the rise, but so is the total number of connected devices each person owns.

The result is explosion of mobile data consumption across an explosion of new devices – even if the number of actual subscribers is only increasing incrementally. There are 4.3 billion mobile subscribers today, by Cisco’s estimates. We’ll add less than a billion to that figure by 2017.

In that year, the average global consumer will be responsible for 2 GB each month, but North America will go for extra helpings at the mobile broadband buffet. Cisco predicts that the average U.S. or Canadian subscriber will account for 6.2 GBs of consumption each month, spread out over multiple devices. Western European usage will be nearly half that number.

The average Asian consumer will fall below the 2 GB mark, but they’ll make up plenty of ground in sheer volume of users. In 2017, Asia will have 2.8 billion people hooked into the mobile internet using a total of 5.2 billion connected devices. In North America there will only be 316 million subscribers sporting 841 million individual connections. Despite their data heavy diets, American and Canadians will account for only 19 percent of global mobile traffic, while Asia will consume nearly half.

Not all of that traffic will traverse cellular networks. Cisco counts mobile traffic offloaded onto Wi-Fi networks or carrier femtocells in its calculations, though it doesn’t count Wi-Fi-only devices such as a tablet without 3G/4G radio. According to Cisco’s calculations, 33 percent of all mobile device traffic never reached a cell tower and was shunted into an access point or femtocell instead.

By 2017, Cisco expects Wi-Fi and femtos to handle nearly half of all mobile traffic. For data-centric devices like tablets, that number will be as high as 71 percent. North America is already well ahead in the offload curve. About 47 percent of our region’s mobile bits traversed local area networks in 2012.

Cisco compiles its numbers through a combination of multiple independent analyst reports, direct measurements from its speed-test apps and metrics it collects from its operator customers. Because Cisco has a vested interest in selling hardware that pushes packets through the mobile internet, its VNI has faced criticism in the past, particularly as carriers use Cisco’s projections to justify their spectrum acquisition sprees.

For the last five years, Cisco has revised VNI projections each year to account for new variables and the previous years recorded measurements. Last year it revised its projections upwards, finding its 2011 analysis too conservative. This year Cisco lowered its projections downwards slightly. Cisco analysts said new tiered plans in North America and Europe applied the brakes on average consumption, especially in Europe where there is a high concentration of 3G/4G connected laptops.

Buffet image courtesy of Flickr user Wesley Fryer

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The reason EE has been able to roll out LTE first is that the regulator, Ofcom, gave it permission to ‘refarm’ its existing 2G and 3G spectrum for the super-fast new breed of mobile broadband. Its rivals are now bidding alongside EE for newly-freed-up spectrum in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands, which will allow them to deploy 4G networks around the middle of this year.

But that’s not good enough, apparently. On Friday, Ofcom said it was responding to complaints from Vodafone and Three in which those carriers said they also wanted to be able to refarm their existing 2G and 3G spectrum. Telefonica (O2) and Vodafone have also asked to be allowed to turn up the power on their 2G base stations for 3G use.

Ofcom already has to allow all this due to a directive from the European Commission, but until now it’s been granting ‘liberalization’ licenses on a case-by-case basis. If the consultation launched today (PDF warning) doesn’t run into big difficulties – and the operators’ rare unity suggests it won’t – this will change very soon.

According to Ofcom, the proposed changes will “align the permitted technologies across all mobile spectrum licences, including the existing licences at 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2100MHz and the licences to be awarded by auction in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands”.

“This will meet a long standing objective to liberalise all mobile licences so that there are no regulatory barriers to the deployment of the latest available mobile technology,” the regulator said.

It will be interesting to see how this affects the bidding in the spectrum auction. The consultation closes on 29 March, by which time that auction process should be over with.

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The new app, freely available in the Google Play store, is similar to another app we’ve covered in the past: RootMetrics. The idea behind both is similar, capturing network information from app users and aggregating the data to help consumers make carrier decisions. While both work well at this, I like how OpenSignal 2 incorporates Wi-Fi networks: There’s a handy compass to find the best, closest networks, or even your nearest cellular tower if you’re interested in that.

OpenSignal 2 also doubles as a speed test app and a broadband meter, helping you keep track of how much data you’ve used in a given period. Here’s a rundown of all the features, per the OpenSignal 2 blog announcement:

– Find a better connection, using our signal compass to point you in the direction of a better signal.
– See our crowdsourced coverage maps in-app and compare the quality of mobile networks directly on your phone with data from 200 countries worldwide.
– Locate nearby public access Wi-Fi networks, and see them clearly on a map, with over 100 million Wi-Fi hotspots logged.
– Test the speed of your data connection with our speedtest feature.
– Keep track of your data, text and voice usage with our brand new ‘stats’ tab.

OpenSignal raised $1.3 million in funding last September and boasts 2.5 million users. Normally, I don’t pay much attention to how many people are using an app, but in this case, it’s important. Every one of those 2.5 million users act as sensor-gathering entities feeding the OpenSignal database.

Oh, and don’t fret iPhone users: I see a “sign up for iPhone” link on the OpenSignal site, so it appears to be in the works.

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The carrier announced the news on Tuesday at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show, noting that its 4G Unlimited plan is the most popular: 46 percent of T-Mobile customers last month chose the $70 plan that provides unlimited voice, messages and data on T-Mobile’s network. And it’s a busy network. T-Mobile says that each day, 32 million songs are streamed and Facebook is visited 1.8 billion times.

T-Mobile’s new laptop partnerships will offer a taste of that network as well. The new 4G Connect offering will start on the Dell Inspiron 14z Ultrabook and HP Pavilion dm1 laptop. Qualcomm’s Gobi modem chip enables the connection, which T-Mobile says is easier to use than Wi-Fi because it’s a “walk out working” type of service.

Once the monthly data allotment of 200 MB is used up, customers can opt for additional data starting at $10 for 1 GB of service. T-Mobile expects the 4G Connect program to expand across various other tablets and notebooks priced at $499 or higher, including some future Windows RT products.

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First, a look at the overall picture. Ovum estimates that telecom industry revenues for 2012 will have totalled more than $2 trillion, which is up marginally from 2011′s $1.96 trillion, and capital expenditures should also be up from $314 billion in 2011 to more than $330 billion last year. Not stellar – that revenue growth is two percent, down from seven in 2011 – and in fact, the analyst house is warning that growth may flatline over the next five years.

However, Ovum also reckons that there’s significant growth to be had in specific sectors. Number one for the operators is mobile broadband – here, Ovum predicts a very healthy 19.2 percent compound annual growth rate between now and 2016, generating $123 billion in incremental revenue during that period.

This is important stuff to bear in mind as it colors the behavior of telcos, particularly when it comes to subjects such as net neutrality. A top-level chart of those forecasts:

We already know full well that mobile broadband revenues are in the growth phase. However, as Chetan Sharma pointed out last year, this too shall pass, and operators really need to lay the groundwork for the next stage. A stage that should really entail so-called over-the-top services.

Here’s where Ovum sounds a pretty big warning, albeit a mixed one:

“Over­-the-­top services such as digital music and mobile gaming are not compelling revenue opportunities for telcos. However, they are important for strategic reasons.”

Those strategic reasons appear to be around capturing market share, rather than actually, you know, making more money. Do the telcos really stand a chance in competing with nimbler upstarts such as WhatsApp and giants such as Apple that dominate other parts of the industry? I’ve expressed my skepticism pretty clearly on that one a number of times.

Another interesting growth area, Ovum suggests, is that of telcos’ public cloud services. Check out this chart:

Software-as-a-service is the biggest opportunity – there, Ovum calculates $19 billion in revenues during 2012 and more than $40 billion in 2016. Remember that when we talk telco SaaS, we’re talking mostly enterprise-focused services such as unified communications, where the extra draw is the telco’s ability to provide private, secure access. Some service providers are also offering CRM applications and the like, often through partnerships.

Infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service are smaller but growing faster. Overall, the analysts peg cloud as the fastest-growing new revenue opportunity for service providers, if smaller than mobile broadband. Exciting times, if the telcos manage to grab that opportunity.

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NSN revealed its plans to become a lean, mean 4G machine last November, when it announced a restructuring plan involving 17,000 job cuts and the shedding of any business unit unrelated to its core mobile broadband strategy. It quickly sold off its wireline access business to Adtran and its mobile backhaul unit to DragonWave. NSN’s carrier business support systems (BSS) software division is also rumored to be on the auction block with both Ericsson and Amdocs as potential bidders.

NSN, however, chose to hold onto its optical business, saying it fit with its 4G goals, but it now appears to have changed its mind. Here’s Ovum network infrastructure analyst Dana Cooperson’s take:

“When Nokia Siemens Networks announced its updated strategy about a year ago it said it was focusing its business on mobile broadband but needed to keep its optical group as a complement. This struck Ovum as odd: its strongest position in optical (it’s ranked 10th globally in the $14.9B market with just under $500M annual sales) is in the network core, where there is little connection with MBB. Furthermore, NSN’s optical business has been slipping for years with no clear plan to improve; it has not done the kind of fundamental R&D that its main competitors (e.g., Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco Systems, Huawei Technologies) are doing.”

It’s unclear what a private equity firm will do with a global optical equipment unit, but Cooperson said Marlin’s goal may just be to flip the business over to one of NSN’s competitors, possibly Juniper Networks.

NSN 4G focus, however, appears to paying dividends. At the time of its restructuring announcement, NSN had just acquired Motorola’s commercial networks businesses, it was running short of operating cash, and it had missed out on some of the initial major LTE contracts. But in the last year it has emerged as a big 4G contender, winning key carrier deals in Asia and posting record profits in the third quarter.

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We’ve previously noted that in the U.S. more than 50 percent of the population has a smartphone, so the growth opportunity for first-time smartphone buyers is actually declining. Sales of smartphones in other regions are on the rise, however, with smartphone sales accounting for 40 percent of all mobile phones sold in the last quarter according to Ericsson. The top activities on handsets are adding to the data demand: web browsing and video consumption comprise around 35 percent of all smartphone data usage. And already about half of all video consumption on a smartphone takes place outside the home on a mobile network.

Those usage figures rise higher on the larger displays of tablets. Ericsson says that 40 percent of all mobile data used on tablets is due to growth in online video activities.

I noted this back in August with my somewhat outlandish prediction that small tablets will eventually replace smartphones. The larger the screen — but still portable, of course — the more immersive and enjoyable the video consumption experience can be.

Ericsson also notes the current shift to HSPA+ and LTE around the world as these faster, more efficient data networks are needed to keep up with demand. By the end of this year, an estimated 55 million subscribers will use LTE, for example, but that number will quickly grow to 1.6 billion  by 2018. In the meantime, however, WCDMA/HSPA networks are shouldering the transitional load with more growth in subscribers than LTE as carriers have to build out new infrastructure for LTE coverage for our mobile screens.

Granted, Ericcson is a major seller of networking equipment, so it stands to benefit from such growth. So perhaps a little skepticism is warranted on the details, but the trends appear sound to me. In fact, mobile operators are likely to be happy with such forecasts as more mobile device sales growth fuels the rallying cry of “spectrum shortage!” However, these same operators are capping mobile broadband plans which Dean Bubly notes on his Disruptive Wireless blog could actually limit growth while helping carriers optimize billing and usage.

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I still think the idea of Google becoming a carrier is laughable (you can read why here), but it’s looking more and more likely that Google wants to put some skin in the mobile broadband game through strategic investment. In fact it’s already done so in the past, plopping down $500 million to fund Clearwire’s WiMAX ambitions. WiMAX didn’t exactly work out – it sold its Clearwire stake this year – so now Google may be setting its sites on LTE.

Dish is a satellite communications and TV provider with a hankering to become a terrestrial mobile operator. Over the last few years it’s scooped up a bunch of satellite communications licenses that it’s asking the Federal Communications Commission to clear for LTE use. Dish claims that wants to become a legitimate contender in the 4G market and is looking for partners to help it get its LTE network off the ground – or so it claims. Dish is just as likely to flip its spectrum for a quick profit once it gets the FCC to open up its spectrum.

Assuming for the moment that Dish is sincere, however, what would a partnership with Google bring it? Obviously money: Google has deep pockets and building a network 4G network from scratch is an expensive proposition, costing the companies well upwards of $10 billion. Ideally Dish would like to partner with an entrenched mobile carrier, one that already has the core and tower infrastructure in place to host its radio network as well as the back office and customer service operations to actually run a nationwide mobile carrier.

Google has the cash and Dish has the spectrum, but neither Google nor Dish bring expertise and infrastructure, which would put both at disadvantage. They would have to start from square one, replicating what the major wireless operators have spent more than a decade building. If that sounds like a huge disadvantage, that’s because it is.

But then again Google may be looking to start from scratch. Partnering with an established mobile operator, means embracing the traditional carrier business models of expensive mobile data tiers and long-term contracts as well as a mindset still grounded in protecting old-school voice and SMS services and their revenues. There’s a reason why Google invested in Clearwire. It wanted to challenge the traditional way of selling wireless services. It may now see the same opportunity with Dish.

Dish photo courtesy of (CC BY 2.0) Flickr user 

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Surely some of these results are powered by the fact that smartphone sales have surpassed those of computers and tablet sales are starting to catch up as well. More smartphones than laptops in use, for example, certainly add to more potential hotspot connections for handsets.

What else is driving such behavior? The cellular industry moving away from unlimited data plans has to be a big factor here. Wireless data demand continues to rise as fast as, if not faster than, the capability of network infrastructure. And device owners don’t want a connected device to be disconnected, even for a short amount of time: They want instant access to information, communications and media on demand but don’t want to break out the wallet for overages or access to additional amounts of broadband.

Smartphone usage on Wi-Fi hotspots — and tablets too — isn’t likely to slow down then. I’d expect this trend to continue as even more mobile devices are sold while more connected apps and services are developed over time.

So the Wireless Broadband Alliance is smartly using the results of this study to make a stronger case for Passpoint. This initiative will not only simplify the Wi-Fi hotspot connection process but it will help to offload more traffic off of mobile broadband networks. The data also makes a good point for the use of small-cell networks and greater Wi-Fi rollouts from cellular operators as the connected population wants access to more data more often but without paying much more money.

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