John Linton
.....'NBN2' continues to get discussed.
I've noticed that I get 7.2mbps down signal strengths in an increasing number of locations around Sydney lately as Optus continues its upgrade to its network. It doesn't mean much to me operationally as anything above 1 mbps I simply don't notice as my almost exclusive use of wireless broadband is email and intranet access with some web browsing - I am a typical business user. However it is relevant to the increasing number of residential users who have opted to use wireless broadband to replace their low end usage wireless broadband either because they don't plan to stay in their current residence for a year or because they really don't use very much download. Of course Telstra claims that they offer much faster speeds than Optus and Vodafone/3 also make claims that they are upgrading the speeds of their current network but I can never seem to work out what that actually means - perhaps I'm not looking in the right places.
As someone who was a user in the very, very early days of mobile telephony I remember how rapidly both coverage and call clarity improved over my first two years of using a mobile phone and how rapidly mobile call costs declined from 1990 to 1995 (or thereabouts). The same has happened in the usability and cost of wireless broadband services over the past two years with 2010 likely to see further improvements in the three key aspects of the service - cost, speed and coverage with Optus now saying that they provide wireless broadband to 97% of the Australian population and Telstra doubtless saying they do more than that. So while "discussions will continue" this week on how best to deploy and 'NBN2' both Telstra and Optus have already done it by building a commercially sound network that will only continue to get better in terms of coverage density, speed and cost. In terms of residential users and small businesses it already does deliver a solid broadband service with only the cost for a 'heavier' user remaining a barrier to wider usage.
The new ABS figures will be available some time in February which while not being definitive always provide a 'guide' as to what's happening in the broadband marketplace. The last two six monthly reports show very fast growth in wireless broadband and it will be interesting to see whether wireless broadband has continued to grow as quickly as in the past two reports.....and also whether wire line broadband has recovered from its apparent 'ceiling' shown in the last report. The level of interest in wireless broadband by both business and residential users seems to only be increasing and it seems only a matter of time before wireless eclipses wire line as the most popular broadband service - and yes - I do understand the two services will be used for different purposes with many users having both a wireless and a wire line broadband service.
Right now I have both, or I suppose I have three counting my office connection, and I think it will become the 'norm' for most business people to have both a wireless and at least one wire line service (home, office, on the move). I also think that many residential users will have two services though I think the residential 'renting' demographic may only end up having a wireless broadband service for all the obvious reasons. The people I speak with, either in business or via Exetel's fora or this blog, always stress the cost per gb as a major barrier to more widespread wireless use which is undoubtedly true right now in Australia - but in other countries in the EU and in the USA the cost of wireless broadband is much lower than it is here at the moment and there is little doubt that the cost of Australian wireless broadband will continue to fall over time.
I would think that the testing of LTE in Australia by Optus later this year will give a fairly solid indication of what wireless broadband can realistically deliver in terms of speed and to what percentage of the population that speed can be made available and at what, at least, initial costs. If it's anything like what the Europeans are achieving it will be a massive boost to wireless broadband use and contribute to the faster 'wind down' of the use of wire line services in at least the major Australian cities. However that is later in 2010 and many things will happen in the meantime as both wireless broadband roll outs and density upgrades continue and new economies of scale are reached as wireless broadband users go past the 3 million user mark in the not too distant future.
Does anyone remember how long it took to get to 3 million mobile telephone services being used in Australia?
An awful lot longer than it will take wireless broadband to get to 3,000,000 users:
http://www.actewagl.com.au/Education/Communications/MobilePhones/DevelopmentOfMobiles/MobileHistory.aspx