Friday, October 30. 2009HSPA Take Up Continues To AccelerateJohn Linton Anyone who was around in the early days of the introduction of mobile telephony in Australia would be unsurprised at the predictions by the Telstra CEO reported here: http://www.commsday.com/node/631 Perhaps the only question would be whether his quoted time frame is too conservative. While the percentage of the market that sees internet as only being something that is used to massively download other people's property as fast as possible and who decry HSPA as "too expensive" and "too slow" for their needs, they only represent a relatively tiny percentage of the market places that use internet as an essential tool for the education, personal or business lives - the figure of "over 1,000,000 HSPA users (in less than 2 years) compared to 2,500,000 wire line broadband users (in more than 7 years) is an adequate validation of that view. Perhaps, one of the reasons for the ABS reporting a marginal decline in ADSL users concurrently with a steepening increase in the number of HSPA users is that the awareness of of the benefits of HSPA are now growing more rapidly - particularly in regional Australia (as well as the more obvious trends in business usage for travelling users). Irrespective of the ABS reports that make the growing use of HSPA very obvious there is the plain fact that (like mobile telephony back in the early 1990s) the sheer convenience of HSPA plus the ever lower costs of using it is producing a more rapid take up of a technology than has ever previously occurred in Australia and I suspect anywhere else in the world. The 'entry cost' is still much too high (if not for the end user then certainly for the provider) with modem prices in Australia still 4 - 5 times more expensive than the EU, the USA and most parts of Asia and the per gb costs more than double - but that is beginning to change. The modem price will be 'solved' some time in the first half of 2010 as more note book/laptop manufacturers build the HSPA chipset into their products and as the cutting edge router manufacturers do the same. Exetel, which has been looking for a router/ata/hspa chipset product for around two years has seen the prices for such devices fall from over $A500.00 to around $A250.00 to the latest price offered this week of $A150.00 and doubtless it will continue to fall as well as the functionality increasing - as has been the way with technology since some bright spark ten thousand or so years ago 'invented' the wheel. Exetel's efforts to build our HSPA business has proceeded much slower than we had planned for several different reasons (mainly my stupidity - but not entirely) but in October it will reach around 20% of total broad band applications for the first time and, if we correct some of the stupidities on my part, it may well continue to grow more rapidly from now - if only because of the trends noted by Mr Thodey in the cited article and if the next ABS report shows a continuing overall rapid growth. One of the key drivers for an even more rapid 'up take' of HSPA than is currently being achieved relates to the use of VoIP over HSPA (which has driven our desire to source a 'magic box' for under $A100.00) because if VoIP can be implemented cost effectively over HSPA then the line rental cost can be done away with for all but the intensely cautious users which gives an extra $30.00 or so dollars 'saving' by using HSPA which even at today's high data rates provides an additional 3 - 4 gb of monthly downloads. Irrespective of what Exetel manages to achieve in the next phase of our attempts to move a larger proportion of our residential business from ADSL to HSPA the efforts by the mobile carriers themselves will ensure that HSPA continue to grow as rapidly as they can deploy the infrastructure to cater for the demand. As Telstra now notes, the ability to deliver the fibre back haul is a key proviso not only for the HSPA carriers but, as even I pointed out some two years ago, it affects the nonsensical 'NBN1' and now 'NBN2' nonsense being pursued by Krudd and co. A 7.2 mbps HSPA service ANYWHERE in Regional and Rural Australia in sight of a mobile tower 'TODAY' at around $A30.00 per month for 5 gb makes an 'NBN' of whatever number pretty unnecessary.....for a huge slice of the marketplace. HSPA remains, for the vast majority of rural and regional Australian users the best possible option for today and the coming years - and taxpayers don't have to provide one cent for that to be the case nor do the end users have to wait who knows how long to get it. Meanwhile those ISPs who borrowed heavily to install their own DSLAMs in Telstra's exchanges can, as Harry Chapin once observed (slightly modified personal pronoun) - "They watch the metal rusting, they watch the time pass by". Trackbacks
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[....to the latest price offered this week of $A135.00]
I am looking forward to hearing more on this... It sound like a fantastic solution for my holiday house. Harry. Comment (1)
Hi John,
Just a suggestion for the magic box: if you can, a PSTN port to accept incoming calls would widen your potential customer base considerably. I use (and am very impressed with) Exetel VOIP for both business and home use. Without the ability to port a PSTN number to the VOIP service (or at least that was what I was told no more than one month ago, not to mention not being able to allocate numbers in certain areas on request) I think many consumers would keep their Telstra copper line to receive incoming calls as they don't need to change their number. Plus it gives that peace of mind for 000 calls and if, for some reason, the data service is down. Something else to look for that I've noticed from using a few of the ATAs with this failover capability is that they tend to be slow (a couple of rings) to pass incoming caller ID information to the handset connected to them. With the PSTN connection, I wouldn't hesitate to purchase these devices for older members of my family who would never get rid of their "Telecom". Anyway, just a thought. Comment (1)
You can port your PSTN number to a VoIP number now.
As with all technology - whatever shortcomings it may have today it will be resolved 'tomorrow'. Comments (7)
With what restrictions? I enquired about porting PSTN to an Exetel Fax2Email VoIP number and was told that was not possible, and could choose only from the listed VoIP numbers.
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Exetel only provide this service to naked DSL services, not HSPA.
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While the percentage of the market that sees internet as only being something that is used to massively download other people's property as fast as possible and who decry HSPA as "too expensive" and "too slow" for their needs, they only represent a relatively tiny percentage of the market places that use internet as an essential tool for the education, personal or business lives
John, once again you state that the typical user does not need high download quota and speeds higher than 1500 KBs - you don't explicitly state this here (speed) but you have done so before. Once again I through my hands up in despair! Why is that? Let me give you an example: I saw a customer yesterday (home user). I was there to get her Apple laptop connected to her Airport Express wireless router. Once that was done I started downloading the Apple Software Updates. Size of the updates: Aprox. 1.5 *GB*. Thankfully she had an ADSL2 connection. I did not fancy staying till midnight! I also use remote support software to log into PCs to cut down on travel time/cost and deliver faster response time. Again the (upload)speed limits functionality. During a remote session I may have to reinstall a HP Multifunction printer. No problem, I just upload the driver/software to the customer's PC. Ouch, 180 MB - how long will that take on ~300KBs upload speed? Remote backup: In most cases the initial (full) backup can not be done remotely as it would take days if not longer. An initial seed backup needs to be done to external HDD and transported to the location of the backup server. What about delivering live presentations and video to to deliver IT training to my customer's. Remote installation of OS and transfer of all data from the old to the new machine. I have done this on desktop roll-outs using LAN connections. Impossible using Internet connections now unless you are on 100MBs Ethernet connections. I could go on but enough of that. Basically the way I would like to deliver IT solutions to customers heavily depends on FAST Internet connections (download AND upload) with cheap enough bandwidth. And no music/video downloader in view here at all! HSPA actually can play a role: It works very well as an out-of-band connection to a customers server management card for example. Comment (1)
I don't disagree that a small percentage of users need faster download speeds than HSPA currently provides.
However there is the rest of the market that doesn't. Comments (7)
I'm not sure how many customers will love the experience of VOIP using HSPA (Optus).
I'm currently battling with my Android phone registered with my asterisk box at home and I think the latency of the 3G leg is killing conversations, the lag it introduces is too great to allow a free flowing conversation. Pings to my phone start very high (often over 1000ms) then drop to around 500ms. This is what I have noticed using sipdroid which unfortunatley only supports G711. Perhaps a more compressed codec would help, perhaps its the VOIP application its self perhaps its HSPA. Comment (1)
It sounds like your phone, as Nimbuzz works fine on my N96, plus the various ATAs I have plugged into embedded and USB stick routers work flawlessly.
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I tried using Fring on the iPhone with my 2nd Exetel VOIP number and found that Fring doesn't support DTMF codes so I couldn't press numbers to navigate call queue menus. (Can't press 2, 2 on Exetel's support number, or dial 121 to hear my exetel voicemail)
I don't believe Nimbuzz supports DTMF codes either, so until that's supported it's not a full replacement for normal PSTN or mobile phones. Regards, Michael. Comments (2)
We will shortly release a 'perfect' VoIP over mobile application.
I have been using our beta version for a year now with no problems. Comments (7)
'perfect'
I will beleive it when I see it and use it. There has been no updates on this beta since the start of 2009. It also has an issue with Samsung Symbian S60 Phones. Comment (1)
Me too... we've only been asking for an update in this thread for about 6 months...
http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=308&t=30455&hilit=replacement+fring&start=135 T. Comment (1)
It was more difficult than we ever thought.
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You said in an earlier post that you had abandoned the "magic box." Is it back on the table? Even at $150 that is excellent.
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I had given up but one of our senior employees was holidaying in the PRC and via old contacts found a possible new supplier.
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I would love to see how ell it performs as it would be ideal for me to recommend to clients that have been on Virgin, as they often don't have active copper to their house anymore.
However I must admit I'm still hesitant to recommend it as I would need to know first hand that it was far superior to that despite being on the same network. Comment (1)
I think it's all a question of time - like mobile telephony a decade ago.
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