John Linton
....if you don't fully understand how you got to where you are today.....and why.
Statistics are essential in operating most businesses and their collection and analysis are a major part of most senior manager's working lives. I have never been good with 'numbers' being much more adept with 'words' - I can do a cryptic crossword much more easily than I can do a Sudoku - but my working life is dominated by statistics and I have learned to collect and work with them over time. However I received two emails last night - one from an Exetel employee and one from an Exetel Agent that showed how both interesting and dangerous statistics are and how difficult it is to use them sensibly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
http://hothardware.com/News/Mobile-Data-Surpasses-Voice-Traffic-For-First-Time/
I found the 'information' in these two links interesting, and amusing, enough to on-send the emails to all our Australian and Sri Lankan personnel and subsequently received a third link to an updated version of the first one from one of our forum administrators:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8
There are some statements in all three of these links that, if you think about them for a few seconds, simply can't be true because it would be impossible to collect the data to frame the analysis but most of it makes sense and illustrates the points very well.
The 'article' initially interested me the most as it had some factual basis that made its prediction that mobile devices would carry more data than wire line networks within 10 years. While that seems to be unlikely in today's contexts it was supported, in a sense, by the following two statistic deluges that reminded me that things continue to change ever more rapidly in technology. I was also reminded that when I listened to an update on wireless technology in the EU some 4 years ago the speaker predicted that wireless data would reach speeds of 160 mbps in commercial networks by 2010 via LTE - and that prediction, as well as lesser speed mile stones over the past four years have all been achieved.
If ever there was any doubt about such predictions the comment (and I couldn't corroborate the attribution) that the major US mobile networks are now deriving more revenue from data than from voice removed them. As any simpleton knows - commercial investment follows the money and if there is money to be made in mobile data services then the money required to develop the infrastructures that will increase that amount of money will have no trouble being found. Maybe mobile infrastructures won't carry more data than other infrastructures in ten years time......then again maybe they will. The only thing the past and current circumstances have ever reflected in my four plus decades in the technology industry is that wherever things are today is an exact definition of where they won't be 'tomorrow'.
I don't see any references in what is happening to our local communications industry in either the cities or regional and rural areas that would contradict the broad generalities of the stat deluges on VoIP or the 'facts' cited in the article. My eldest son has spent Easter in the Hunter Valley on a rural property where he installed an Exetel wireless service for his fiancee's father and he emailed me saying it is now running at over 3 mbps compared to half that speed when it was first installed - that is simply a clear example of what will happen across all of the wireless networks around Australia. Will it ever get to 160 mbps - almost certainly not. Will it get to faster than 3 mbps - without any doubt at all. I use my mobile wireless service in both my Nokia and my Sony lap top and I never have any problems in the places I use those devices and our household will almost certainly never buy another desk top and will probably get rid of our last telephone land line (we used to have three) before the end of 2010 and use mobile telephony and wireless broadband.
Will we install an 'NBN2' service? Only time will tell.