App Developers Should Be ‘Clever’ About Bandwidth Consumption, Executives Say
SAN FRANCISCO -- Software developers making applications for smartphones and new platforms need to keep in mind the looming bandwidth caps and usage-based billing models of network operators, executives said at the Appnation conference late Monday. Wireless bandwidth caps are inevitable, said David Zilberman, a principal at Comcast Interactive Capital, the cable operator’s investment arm. The app developer “ecosystem needs to evolve a bit in the way they build applications and deliver content to devices,” he said.
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Smartphones and applications that run on them may soon have standardized user-interfaces around how customers manage their bandwidth consumption and privacy controls, said Vice President Tyler Lessard of BlackBerry. Just as there is an icon on the phone to monitor battery consumption, so too should there be a bandwidth-consumption meter, an app developer said. As developers make more browser-based HTML5 applications rather than ones bought from manufacturers’ app stores, they will have to be increasingly smart about how they handle traffic, said Carlo Longino, community manager at Wireless Industry Partnerships. Carriers will gain more flexibility to introduce usage-based pricing as they deploy new networks, he said. “It’s going to be really difficult for operators to put the cat back in the bag with their current networks.” As operators deploy new technologies such as LTE “it’s a new network and they can charge you differently,” he said.
App developers already are careful about traffic on the carriers’ networks, said Craig Kirkland, director of mobile products for CNN. “When thinking about product design and distribution, you should never lose sight of the fact that the technology and the networks are needed” to deliver the product, he said. “We're trying to be very careful about not overwhelming our customers or a network with bandwidth."
Carriers will expand bandwidth as consumer demand dictates, said Timothy Lee, a venture capitalist with Sequoia Capital. Just as the development of broadband was born out of the limits of dial-up Web access, “the constraints that we have on the network today and the resulting investment is going to be good for how the networks progress,” Lee said. “We see the potential for new applications and use cases, and disruptive new companies taking advantage of this new and exciting area."
Privacy is another potential regulatory issue developers and carriers need to keep in mind, said Ed Ruth, Verizon director of business development. Both carriers and application developers can access valuable analytics and demographic data, he said. “The trick is to anonymize that information in a way that the FCC deems reasonable,” he said. “There are regulatory issues we have to get through.” The threat of antitrust review is also affecting the development of app stores, said Sharon Wienbar, managing director of Scale Venture Partners. “The FTC probably played a looming backdrop role in Apple’s revised developer agreement announcement last week.”