Last week we exhibited at The Cable Show in Los Angeles, CA. This event provides a forum for all the Cable MSOs to gather to discuss content/programming, TV networks and much of the infrastructure to deliver next generation video.

Alongside the very Hollywood-esque show is CableNet. This always well-attended “product demo-focused” pavilion of the show, organized by CableLabs, provides insight into timely key themes such as interactive TV, video on demand, and broadband over cable. It gives operators the chance to see a broad range of product demonstrations within a very focused area.

Sandvine took the opportunity to demonstrate its latest product in our Network Business Intelligence Portfolio.  Network Data Analytics is focused on providing an executive level dashboard view of how subscribers are using their broadband service. It aims to answer questions like “How do my DOCSIS 3 subscribers use their service compared to the DOCSIS 2 subscribers?” or “Where will I get the best return on my CAPEX budget?”. It was great to see the many cable operators who  dropped by to explore. They were quite intrigued by the flexibility of the product and how it could potentially help them to enhance their businesses and their customers quality of experience. After all, providing better broadband is the end goal.

In addition to a wide range of operators, we were pleased to host FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, when he dropped by to see some of the trends that Sandvine is currently reporting on.

Were you at the show? Please share your better broadband observations and experiences.

On March 5th  I spoke about what it is that connects me to life when I’m remote from my home or office; what are the applications I most value on the go? And, what’s the one application that, trapped on an island, I just can’t do without? For me it was email. I ask you, the Better Broadband readers to take our survey and let us know what your island app is. Check out these results and see if they surprise you at all. I should include some demographics on our voters; 30% of respondents were 18-30 years of age, 60% were 31-50 and 10% were 51+.

The most popular island app was web browsing at 43% followed by email at 32%. Twitter and Facebook came in at 5% each and a bunch of you picked “other” which primarily broke-out into the websites for your favorite airline

I guess the results shouldn’t surprise – the vast majority consider the basic applications as the must- haves. We can all wait until we get home to resume gaming and watching movies.

Yesterday Sandvine released its semi-annual Internet report where we shared observations from a cross-section of the world’s leading mobile data providers. Interestingly enough, the key take away was that mobile networks are very similar to fixed line. Sandvine continues to see evidence that mobile data is becoming mainstream phenomena as subscribers rely on their mobile connections to do the same things they do on their home PCs. In fact, voice is consuming an ever smaller percentage of overall mobile network traffic. According to a March report by analyst Chetan Sharma, GigaOM Pro Analyst Network, U.S. data traffic exceeded voice traffic by almost 400,000 GB in 2009 and that ratio is expected to double this year. It’s clear, mobile data usage and revenues are disconnected.

So what does this mean for mobile operators? We believe that as more and more applications are offered on mobile devices, operators are looking to predict usage patterns so they can offer personalized service tiers that increase customer satisfaction, and to build out their networks to match user demand. AT&T recently stated that “5 percent of users account for approximately half of the data traffic on average” so clearly flat-rate billing does not align with subscriber usage (see Fierce Wireless: Mobile data traffic patterns look similar to fixed broadband patterns).

And for subscribers? Hopefully it means more and more applications along with appropriate service tiers that economically keep our lives connected to the Internet, everywhere.

Some of the high-level findings of Sandvine’s report include interesting observations like social networking accounting for up to 9% of total bytes on any given mobile network and YouTube accounting for 10 to 15 percent of total bytes on any given mobile network. To download the full report visit http://www.sandvine.com/news/global_broadband_trends.asp.