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LTE accounts for 7% of all North American mobile connections

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:28:50 +0000

In just two years LTE has come a long way. At the end of the third quarter there were 21.5 million LTE connections in the U.S. and Canada, accounting for 7 percent of all North American mobile subscriptions, according to new data from Wireless Intelligence, the research arm of the GSM Association.

In fact, nearly half (48 percent) of all global LTE devices reside on one of the U.S. or Canada’s 15 live LTE networks. Europe has been much slower to adopt the new 4G technology, while LTE activity in Asia has been confined primarily to South Korea and Japan.

The U.S. accounts for 20.5 million of those 4G subscribers, while Canada’s networks host about 1 million. And of those U.S. subscribers, three-quarters or 14.9 million reside with Verizon Wireless. Verizon was not only the first major global operator to launch LTE, it has rolled its network out surprisingly fast. It now offers 4G in well over 400 markets.

LTE image courtesy of Shutterstock user Inq

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Ericsson: 85% of the world will see 3G/4G in 2017

Kevin Fitchard — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:38:07 +0000

It took 12 years for 3G technologies to touch half of the world’s population, but getting to 85 percent coverage will only take another five, according to wireless infrastructure vendor Ericsson. New HSPA+ and LTE network deployments will lead to a near blanketing of the world’s populated areas with mobile broadband by 2017.

What’s more LTE networks are being deployed much faster than their 3G predecessors, said Patrik Cerwall, Ericsson director of strategic marketing. By 2017, LTE will cover 50 percent of the world’s population – a remarkable feat considering the first LTE systems went live only in 2010. That’s, in part, on ongoing trend, Cerwall said: every new generation of cellular technology arrives faster than previous generations. But LTE’s remarkable growth owes much to the huge demand for mobile data spurred by the smartphone, he added.

Total global mobile connections reached 6.2 billion in the first quarter, driven by enormous take up in developing markets. While smartphone penetration in North America, Europe and parts of Asia has ramped up, the devices still only account for a fraction – about 700 million — of the world’s total connections. That will change in five years, though. In 2017, there will be close to 9 million total cellular connections, and one third of them will be smartphones, according to the study.

Ericsson’s Traffic and Market Report is chalk full of data, gathered from Ericsson’s customers, its own Consumer Labs analytics and from independent research reports. We’ll be diving into different aspects of the report in the coming days, but Ericsson has prepared an infographic that details the study’s highlights:

Key chain photo courtesy of Flickr user Horia Varlan

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Remote work study: Distance makes the heart grow fonder

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 12:55:11 +0000

Working remotely, for all its benefits, is pretty universally acknowledged to be isolating. Without water cooler chat and random encounters in the hall, the conventional wisdom goes, telecommuters inevitably feel less bonded with their teams and may even suffer loneliness (this is one of the most powerful arguments for coworking after all).

A proposition this intuitive seems like it hardly needs proving, but when researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee actually set out to measure the isolation of remote workers recently they found something shocking. Common sense, in this case, appears to be wrong. For the study published in Communication Monographs, the UWM team compared feelings of closeness to co-workers and the organization, and feelings of stress due to interruptions of those who regularly worked at least three days a week away from the office with those that worked at least three days a week in a shared space.

Distance, it turns out, doesn’t just make the heart grow fonder in romance novels but also in our working lives. Calling the disconnected teleworker a “myth,” UWM’s release outlined the key study results:

Less is more. “The benefits of frequent communication with others were minimal and not significantly related to teleworkers’ or office workers’ sense of closeness with others in workplace interactions,” the researchers found.

Communication can equal stress. “Office workers reported significantly greater levels of stress due to interruptions compared to teleworkers.”

The phone exception. “For teleworkers, stress from interruptions was associated with increased face-to-face communication, email, instant messaging and videoconferencing. For office workers, stress was only related to increased face-to-face and email communication. Results indicate, however, that phone communication generally did not induce the same degree of stress as the other modes.”

What’s the takeaway for remote workers and their managers? Don’t blindly think that more communication is necessarily better. “It is often assumed that teleworkers need a lot of communication and contact with the organization in order to diminish their sense of distance and to develop a sense of belonging, but we found that the more teleworkers communicated with others, the more stressed they felt due to interruptions, and this was negatively associated with their identification with the organization,” said Kathryn Fonner, UWM assistant professor of communication and one of the researchers behind the study.

“Teleworkers should strategically manage their connectivity in order to balance the benefits and drawbacks of communicating with others, while organizations should focus on streamlining communication. This may include limiting mass emails, diminishing the number of weekly meetings, creating information stores and fostering an environment where employees can schedule uninterrupted time to work,” concurred co-author Michael Roloff, professor of communication studies at Northwestern University.

It’s worth noting that these latest results gel with earlier results showing distance can actually make workers like their colleagues more by diminishing the amount of political behavior telecommuters feel they need to deal with. We summarized the findings here on GigaOM with a famous quote: “Hell is other people.” This study offers more evidence that Sartre was on to something.

Do you think remote managers over-communicate with remote team members, inadvertently stressing them out, because of the mistaken belief that frequent contact is necessary for team cohesion?

Image courtesy of Flickr user miss.libertine.

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Study of New Year’s Resolutions: Workers Won’t Unplug in 2011

Charles Hamilton — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 20:00:23 +0000

Georgina recently disconnected for a day, but a recent survey of New Year’s resolutions found that workers are not interested in being out of touch in 2011. Less than one in five workers (19 percent) resolves to unplug from email or voicemail in their time off from work.

The findings lead to the notion that American workers are focused on getting more done in 2011. With an estimated 247 billion emails sent daily (according to Pingdom), Americans are focused on how to become more productive in our post-recession economy and how to get more out of their business communications.

This survey was conducted online in December, 2010 by Harris Interactive on behalf of Intermedia. Respondents were employed US adults who have a New Year’s business communications resolution.

The survey also found that workers resolve to get organized, and respond more quickly to business communications. We’ll talk about these tomorrow and Thursday.

What are your New Year’s resolutions? How connected do you want to be while away from work in 2011?

Image by sxc.hu user ba1969

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Focus: Do More and Better Work By Being Present

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:00:10 +0000

A new study by Harvard researchers reveals what you probably already at least suspected: a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The trouble is, our minds are very likely to stray from the task at hand unless we’re doing things that tend to require our undivided attention, like working out, holding a conversation, and, apparently most of all, making love.

The reason we manage to stay focused during those tasks is that they require us to remain present in order to guarantee success. That ability to stay in the moment also produces the side effect of satisfaction. Our happiness is never higher than when we have our mind on what we’re doing. That’s a good lesson for web workers.

Job satisfaction, looked at from the perspective of this study, has a lot to do with focus. And for people who work from home, that’s probably not great news. If you’re a remote employee, you generally have unfettered access to the Internet, which means you also have about a million things vying for your attention. You’re probably adept at multitasking, but that same ability to split your focus could lead to unhappiness, which would also lead to burnout.

Maintaining focus is easier said then done, however. So how best to keep your mind on one task? Break that task down to make it easier to identify what’s required to do a truly great job. The difference between really exceeding in the task, and just doing a “good enough” job, is all about attention. If every time you set out to do a task, you set higher standards for yourself than you did last time, you’ll have an easier time maintaining focus and avoiding a wandering mind.

You should also avoid compulsively checking your email, and turn off those audio notifications for new mail. It might be hard to do, depending on what kind of work you do, but even if you can manage to avoid the email crush for a few hours a day, that period of unbroken focus should help improve the quality of your day by quite a bit. Having email “quiet time,” or, even better, keeping specific times during which you open your email app, should make for better email communication, too, since you’ll be more focused on those conversations.

Focus isn’t easy to achieve, especially with so much potential for distraction at hand, but as a remote web worker you have certain advantages over traditional workers. You won’t be as distracted by coworkers, for instance. Also, you have more freedom to set your own schedule, so you can plan attention-heavy tasks for times when you’re less likely to be tired and more prone to distraction.

Even if your task is undesirable, focusing on it to the exclusion of all else will provide a greater sense of satisfaction, and should help you feel happier in your job. It won’t be easy, and work is one of the places your mind is most likely to wander, but if you’re aware and take an active hand in keeping present and in the moment, you’ll have a much better chance of getting things done.

What methods do you use to help you maintain your focus?

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Health and Productivity Go Hand in Hand

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:00:09 +0000

Even if you work online, doing a job that you could conceivably do from a prone position with a notebook resting on your stomach, you probably find that motivating yourself to get to work when you’re feeling under the weather is still awfully hard. But even if you’re not sick, low levels of motivation may still be related to health. It turns out that how fit you are can have a serious effect on your productivity levels.

The Problem: Getting Bigger All the Time

A recent study conducted by Duke University found that the “hidden” cost of obesity on productivity was around $73 billion in the U.S. And that’s above and beyond the healthcare costs related to being very overweight.

According to the researchers conducting the study, “[o]besity’s hidden costs… stem from the fact that obese people tend to be less productive than normal-weight people while at work — simply accounting for the extra sick days they take misses a big part of the picture.”

Obesity isn’t the only health issue that can lead to less-than-optimal work performance. Smoking, eating poorly, and not getting enough exercise have also been linked to decreased productivity.

The trend in the U.S. is increasingly toward larger waistlines and more sedentary lifestyles, which, in turn, is leading to a drop in the ability of workers to do work. For at-home workers, who tend to be within easy reach of the fridge and at a computer for eight or more hours a day, the effect can be even more pronounced.

Web workers also tend to miss out on some benefits that encourage an active lifestyle, like subsidized gym memberships, so it can be hard to encourage worker health at home. But if you’re having trouble motivating yourself, think about it this way: greater health equals greater productivity.

The Solution: Exploit Your Freedom

Web workers have an advantage over traditional office workers. When you work from home, generally speaking, you have a degree of flexibility built into your day. If there’s a gym nearby, you can get out to that for a half-an-hour each day. Even if you have to pay for your own membership, the increase in energy you’ll get back as a result should make up the cost thanks to your ability to work longer and harder. If you’re lucky, you might even have a gym in your building, or in your own home, in which case not using it just can’t be justified from a cost/benefit perspective. Getting out during the day at least a few times even just to walk should help stave off more serious problems like obesity, too.

Use an exercise ball as your office chair for a portion of the day, if you feel you can’t peel yourself away from the desk. Crunches and push-ups in quick sets between tasks is another great way to get a little bit of exercise throughout the day with relatively low impact. It might draw some funny stares if you were in a traditional office setting, but that’s the beauty of working from home.

You can eat what you want when you work from home, but here again it can really be an advantage. You won’t be tempted to just be lazy and eat out every single day for lunch. Instead, you can save time, money and help yourself feel better by preparing healthy meals in advance to be eaten during the week.

There are some great tips for how you can eat more healthily at work, and the same logic applies when working from home. And you have less of an excuse than your office-bound colleagues because healthier ingredients should be ready to hand if you’re being smart about your grocery shopping.

The Benefit: Better Work, Done More Quickly

If you’re healthy, you’ll produce in a healthy manner. That means you won’t have to work as hard to get things done, and the quality of your work will be more consistent. I find that I’m much more focused and able to concentrate when I’m being active regularly and eating the right things. A good work out will clear your head, and might help you come up with a solution to a tricky problem.

It can be hard to keep active, but now studies are emerging that say you should do so, not just for the sake of your own health, which isn’t reason enough for many, but for the sake of your wallet. When it comes to the bottom line, many are much less willing to let things slide. I know I’m more likely to stay fit when I think about it as a matter of being professional versus not. Maybe that’s the kick in the pants you need, too.

Want to learn more about the health impacts of a virtual workforce? Check out our Net:Work conference in San Francisco in December.

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iPad Roundup: Religious Studies

Nick Santilli — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:00:31 +0000

If Apple Computer, Inc. isn’t enough of a religion for you, there are plenty of apps out there for the iPad that should cover most other religions to which you may subscribe. The iPad’s versatility — coupled with developer ingenuity — means there are many different ways to engage with that religion, too.

Some of the religious apps are audio-based, while others provide brief moments (“thought of the day” style) of inspiration. There are the standard works for reading, as well as full-on study aids to really dig in deep. There are even some religious-themed comic books, if that’s more to your taste. Of course, these various options are used at the whim of individual developers, so not all features and delivery methods are available in every religion.

Audio

Covering both hymns and music, as well as readings of the texts and talks, there are some good choices for those who want to use the iPad speakers (or headphones):

Quick Inspiration

Days are busy, but if you want a quick bit of inspiration before you start your day, these apps should deliver:

Standard Books

If you’re just looking to read the Good Word on your iPad, these apps are probably a good place to start:

Hebrew Bible (+ $6.99)
The Quran (+ $.99)
Russian Bible HD ($4.99)
KJV Bible (+ $5.99)
LDS Scriptures Library ($14.99)

Serious Study
With lots of great features, these iPad apps should get you kick-started for some serious religious study:

Logos (FREE)
Gospel Library for iPad (FREE)

There are likely other great apps for serious study for other religions, but as they lie outside my own personal purview. I decided it’s best left to devotees of those faiths to suggest their own in the comments.

Obviously there are many, many more app choices out there. Using the iPad as a platform for religious study means more than just reading the printed (or in this case, digital) word. Many offer online syncing of bookmarks, additional resource downloads, highlighting/note taking, audio passages, and even group study tools. So take your time in perusing the many options to find out which app’s features best suit your needs.

As an interesting aside, I’m seeing more and more iPads appearing at my own worship services on Sundays. The portability and flexibility of the device obviously allows for ease of planning, administration, study, and note taking: all of which fit the bill for many attending church services. I’ve even seen the iPad being used for Sunday School lessons and presentations. The versatility of Apple’s latest device is certainly finding a home in nearly every facet of people’s’ lives.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Analyzing The Social E-book

New Productivity Study Suggests Ditching Visual Alerts

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:00:39 +0000

Growl notifications, alert add-ons for Firefox and for the desktop, and other tools can all help you keep on top of goings-on in your digital world by displaying visual cues whenever new activity appears on your social networks, email, or other web apps. A new study, however, indicates that these tools might not be helping you at all. In fact, they could be seriously hamstringing your productivity.

The intrusive things that can affect your ability to get work done include instant message alerts, according to the study, which was conducted by Helen Hodgetts at the University of Cardiff in the UK. Even, apparently, if you only give these things a moment of your attention before returning to your primary task, you still lose a fairly significant amount of potentially productive time over the course of a day.

Speaking to LiveScience.com, Hodgetts had this to say about the study’s findings:

“Email notifications and instant messages all cause a break in focus of the task in hand, even if they are attended to only very briefly. We might find ourselves needing a few moments to regather our thoughts, and remember what it was that we were about to do before we switched our attention to the interrupting on-screen notification.”

Instead of using visual cues, Hodgetts suggests opting for auditory indicators of new mail, messages and content. If a chime sounds indicating a new message on Adium, my preferred messaging client, I can acknowledge it and continue working without breaking pace. Not only does that save me time, but it also helps make sure I maintain my train of thought, and less valuable information is lost as a result.

I’ve dropped Growl (visual notifications for pretty much any good program on the Mac), and after reading this, I’m going to disable dock bounce and menu bar item visual cues, too. Attention span is my No. 1 challenge as a web worker, and I’ll do anything that might help improve mine.

Do you find visual alerts distracting?

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New Study Says Apple is Most Reliable, Not Asus

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:31:17 +0000

Last month, I reported the results of a study detailing notebook reliability numbers. Many commenters disagreed with the results of the study by U.S. warranty company SquareTrade, and provided excellent reasons for doing so. Today, another study reinforces the opinion unsurprisingly shared by many of our readers; namely, that Apple is indeed the top computer maker when it comes to reliability.

The new study, by Rescuecom, which is a U.S. firm specializing in computer repair, puts Apple at the top of the list when ranking computer makers. Previous studies by the repair franchise had seen Asus take the top spot, in keeping with the results of the SquareTrade study, but the most recent numbers (Q3 2009) show Apple with a commanding lead, according to Electronista.

Apple scored 374, which is more than double Asus’ 166. The PC maker scored third. Rescuecom’s rankings are based on the numbers of machines that it sees come in for repairs, as measured against the number of computers each company ships. The methodology for the study also includes factoring in things like system construction quality and manufacturer post-sale support, in order to bring some influence outside of Rescuecom’s operation to the table. Apple’s sales accounted for nine percent of the market in Q3, while only making up 2.4 percent of Rescuecom’s repair calls.

CEO David Millman suggests that Asus’ recent slip may be due to the growing presence of netbooks in its lineup of offerings. “Now that many of the netbooks by ASUS have been out for a while, there is obviously a higher need for service,” said Millman. It’s true that while Asus makes some of the most sturdy netbooks around, to achieve the incredibly low price points they offer to consumers, corners have to be cut in parts and manufacturing quality.

Lenovo also fared better in Rescuecom’s study, placing a strong second behind Apple with a score of 320. Toshiba and HP rounded out the top five with fourth and fifth place scores of 165 and 134, respectively. The common thread? All of these manufacturers offer at least one netbook-type computer.

There’s no way of saying for certain that low-cost netbooks are definitively affecting the reliability scores of computer makers, but it is beginning to look like Apple was wise to abstain from joining the fray, at least in this regard (though not in others). No doubt Apple’s introduction of unibody aluminum construction, which requires far fewer moving parts and better overall structural strength is also contributing to its increasing product dependability.

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Apple Ranks a Lackluster Fourth in Notebook Reliability Study

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:03:43 +0000

Apple is fairly reliable, but not the most reliable company of all when it comes to notebooks, according to a new study by research firm SquareTrade. The top honor goes to Asus, which surprised me, but I suppose shouldn’t have when I consider the build quality of my fairly inexpensive Eee PC. Toshiba and Sony rank next most reliable, with Apple coming in a close fourth.

I remember a time not too long ago when IBM and Apple would top the list every time, with other manufacturers coming in a fair distance behind them. IBM sold its hardware business to Lenovo, which seems to be having some effect on quality, but is Apple also slipping as it grows? I don’t think there’s enough data to identify a trend, but it is a little worrying.

Still, at least Apple is still under the 20 percent mark for three-year laptop malfunction rates, which is the measure that indicates reliability in the study. Dell is the only company below it, also under 20 percent, with 18.3. After that, things take a significant turn for the worse, with HP coming in ninth place at 25.6 percent. That means Apple is still showing better-than-average performance overall.

Electronista suggests that the reason for the divide between top-tier manufacturers and those that fall below the average is that the companies with greater than 20 percent malfunction rates tend to do much of their business in the budget laptop and notebook categories, which see higher failure rates overall than premium-priced laptops, where Apple exclusively does its business. It’s possible NVIDIA-gate accounted for some of those failures, although SquareTrade doesn’t go into detail about malfunction causes in this report.

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