Friday, April 23. 2010Maybe There Is A 'Wall'..........John Linton .......that wireless growth will hit at some time in Australia's future? I read this: with some interest this morning in the WSJ and was interested in some of the comments about the movement between the expected "giveaway the handset in exchange for a 24 month contract" that is the backbone of Australia's mobile telephone market. In the much tougher residential marketplace conditions being experienced in the USA perhaps the 'need' to have the latest gadgets only available by throwing away your perfectly good two year old mobile phone have finally become financially apparent. Then again maybe not. Whatever the real reason(s) turn out to be a 67% drop in new contract customer sales certainly indicates something massive is changing....at least for Verizon. The US marketplaces have been offered really affordable data mobile capabilities for a very long time (over two years) while Australia (for all of the usual claimed reasons) still has no broadly affordable wireless data offerings from any of the three carriers with the possible exception of Vodafone/3. The US now has relatively inexpensive 'unlimited data' wireless services from multiple carriers and I suspect that Verizon' is perceived as lagging in such offerings there but it's hard to keep track of what offerings are actually being made from this distance. I have no idea of the network capacities of the big US carriers but they were obviously big enough to cater for the huge growth in number of users on much more generous data plan costs than are currently available in Australia - and even more generous than the current offerings in the EU. Whether the moves to unlimited voice and unlimited data are causing pricing headaches for Verizon remains to be seen over the coming months. I will be interested to test out the capabilities of wireless networks in the UK in a couple of months and also check how/if prices have changed since I was there last. I occasionally do some on line checking to get a 'feel' for what is happening there but I would like to check first hand. Growth of wireless usage in Australia continues to expand rapidly (as the last ABS figures demonstrated) and the ongoing investments in data capacity seems to be continuing in Australia. I have never encountered any problems with my personal wireless usage which is, I would have thought, fairly typical of a business user in total and possibly above average in terms of the hours a day/days per month of use. It will be interesting to see what the new rumblings about Telstra raising the cost of wire line prices by $A5.00 a month - will that be the 'last straw' that 'opens the flood gates' (to mangle two metaphors) and results in the mass abandonment of telephone wire lines at a much faster rate? If that happens you would expect to see a significant jump in wireless broadband usage I would have thought. If you don't have a telephone line for ADSL there seems little point these days to pay an increased cost when you have a mobile telephone. If you can get a decent wireless broadband signal and don't need more than 3 - 4 gbytes of downloads you can now get a wireless plan at less cost than the possible rental of a wire line and get lower cost calls and not pay for ADSL. That scenario is truly compelling financially which is why I commented that the mooted PSTN line rental increase may be the 'last straw'. If such an increase does come about and if the carriers, for a change, do continue to upgrade their wireless networks ahead of the increasing demand then the wire line may well 'die out' much sooner than expected. If that does happen - what a different communications land scape we would then see. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. PS: The count down? Nothing spectacular. From tomorrow onwards if you are not an Exetel customer you will need to make a donation to Exetel's endangered wild life projects. Not worth it? Fine. Stop wasting your time reading my worthless ramblings. I have written 1,000 daily entries without missing a day over the past almost three years and if reading those random thoughts isn't of any value then - do yourself a favour..........
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You've counted down.... now what?
I was waiting for a bang or something =/ Comment (1)
Countdowns go to zero - but today's post was my 1,000th consecutive daily blog entry.
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Too bad there wasn't a double or nothing on that bet.
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When I was in the USA it was great. I got 2G coverage(ATT) in every hicktown I visited and almost everywhere in between. However, 3G seems to be newer to them than us. The unfortunate thing for the USA is no one (or more) provider covers everywhere(such as telstra). ATT and Verizon almost have it all in 2G but there are some places that don't overlap. ATT lacks a serious amount of 3G at this time. EDGE does allow good use of a phone such as skype, basic emailing and web browsing but for the home user 3G is most defiantly the way to go.
http://flowingdata.com/2009/11/24/verizon-vs-att-battle-of-the-coverage-maps/ I think they blocked a merger of ATT and Verizon not long ago. Comment (1)
With talk towards capacity upgrades for our local hspa networks +the reentry of non-telco related'WiMAX'. I think our Australian mobile carriers 'Optus/vha/Telstra' are starting to see the writing they will need to start getting 'creative' like the carriers before them have done so in the United States^ to keep their precious revenues up now the novelty factor of data over mobile wares off-- and particularly show cause why consumers should not simply remain on month-to-month terms once their equipment purchases have expired ie forgo the repeat that old cycle of renwed 'iPhones/whatever attracts money waste these days. Watch for: those "5gb products" to get old real fast.
Leading to my next point; that layer 2 networks ought to be permitted/able to take advantage of those dynamics I have outlined. I am suggesting Exetel make a clear point/emphasis here that their, eg. "$30.00-2 gbytes-90 Days'-recharge/Prepaid'"- productline- also suits "MoIP application/usage" on compatible phone hardware - assuming, sensibly, it can be applied beyond "laptops" and therefore (purely) for IP/Mobile_VoIP if the user so chooses. I suspect many people would be happy not to use any 'mobile number' and exclude entirely that circuit-switched data/ per-minute billing/caps we've all had foisted on us in the past/becoming obsolete. Comment (1)
Sadly, my family has just had to leave Exetel as we can no longer get ADSL in the new house. However, if the area gets decent wireless solution coverage, we'll be back! This means I don't qualify for the 'free posts'... but a donation to a worthy cause sounds quite reasonable!
Comment (1)
Sorry to hear that.
Our wildlife is in such a desperate situation any help it can receive is going to make some difference. Comments (3)
I'm glad I can log in with my Exetel ID, but in any case, I'm already a donor for the wildlife program
I have read this blog for about two years. Best thing about it: Real insight into telecomms in Australia, running a "small" business (running joke there John?), and personal values. The thing I can do without: Rants about the Australian political situation. Comment (1)
I'm sorry to hear you have decided to protect access to your blog, as that means I will have to specifically access it rather than read it as part of my daily google reader feed, which means I'll only see it when I specifically go looking.
Thanks for your efforts & insights. Comment (1)
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