Wednesday, January 28. 2009Will HSPA Replace ADSL (Part 2)John Linton I was going to include the following observations in yesterday's entry but it was already too long for ...."and another thing"... The points in yesterday's entry were reinforced by two separate articles in the WSJ I read earlier this morning about the contrasting 'destinies' of two huge US carriers (one who has embraced data over mobile and one who hasn't): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123304191981419017.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123297673176315313.html Verizon's 'partnership' with Vodafone has seen it power ahead in both customer acquisition and profit (despite falling wire line revenues) whereas Sprint/Nextel (once the innovation king of US communications) is facing massive customer erosion by retaining its reliance on wire line revenues for too long. They just provide an interesting, not by any means definitive, counterpoint to my statements about why HSPA may well replace broad band over wire line: It's the cost - stupid. ADSL in Australia carries this massive "tax burden" called paying for the Telstra ULL installation and then monthly access cost in an era where mobile telephony has made wire lines for private users almost an anachronism. The increasing popularity of "Naked" ADSL (Exetel sells more naked ADSL2 than ADSL2 that includes either our or someone else's wire line rental at 2:1 and continuing to increase rapidly) shows how private users are increasingly demonstrating that they have no use for a 'conventional' wire line telephone service preferring to use their mobile or VoIP (or both) to make and receive telephone calls. That must be blindingly obvious to everyone within all Australia carriers and ISPs - it doesn't seem to be disputable. However even "Naked" ADSL continues to carry the cost of the ULL installation and rental which is a significant component of the "Naked" ADSL cost. HSPA, of course, gets rid of the telephone line installation cost and the monthly rental cost - which costs, depending on who you believe, around $16.00 a month from Telstra plus whatever mark up the wholesale customer puts on that charge. (of course Telstra/BigPond doesn't offer "Naked" ADSL2 for reasons that anyone with a few 'grey cells' can probably work out for themselves). So wire line broad band is 'taxed' in Australia by Telstra for providing ADSL over a medium that was designed for something else which is no longer needed by the end user. Locked in to an historical time warp forever if Telstra has its way. HSPA removes this Telstra tax along with removing the artificially high cost of making telephone calls over the Telstra telephone network. Now add to the unwanted cost components a few other little 'presents' from your local monopoly carrier such as the fact that Telstra don't belong to the 'SSS no downtime supplier change' process (meaning that to move away from a Telstra ADSL2 service is a major inconvenience) and you begin to see how 'clunky' a broad band service over a monopoly's resold network has become. Add the fact that some proportion of telephone lines, because of age, distance or other shortcomings can't deliver much above 3 mbps over an ADSL2 service plus a further, growing, percentage will never be able to do that because they are on 'RIMs' and you begin to see that running broad band over copper is far from an ideal solution in terms of either speed or cost - add a monopoly pricing regime and it's absolutely no way to go. And then........ but like yesterday you either get the point or adding to your personal logical thought process isn't going to be useful. A 'go anywhere' (which includes changing addresses which almost half of Exetel's users have done over the past 3 years) broad band service that eliminates the cost of a new installation of a land line and then the monthly rental that you don't need is becoming the MAJOR plus for an increasing percentage of HSPA buyers. The fact that your broad band also travels with you if you have a lap top has always been an obvious advantage. I haven't used anything but VoIP to make land line calls for over two years (either at home or the office) and I haven't used anything but VoIP to make calls from my mobile since we introduced the Exetel HSPA service. I understand I work in 'the industry' and have readily available technical support to deal with my technical inadequacies but it's only a matter of time before the advantage of a 10 cent un-timed call to anywhere in Australia overcomes even the most technophobic hold out's obduracy and/or fear of change. So once that happens the price of broad band can fall to real levels because Telstra is eliminated from the price process: 1) Getting rid of land line rental saves between $20 and $30+ a month 2) Getting rid of land line means no distance/line quality limitations 3) Getting rid of land line gets rid of Telstra's control over pricing allowing ISPs to truly offer different services 4) HSPA will be available to 98% plus of Australian households 5) HSPA speeds will be more than sufficient for 95% of adult user categories (pirates and games players will not use the service) 6) HSPA pricing (minus the land line cost) will be lower than ADSL2 As the speed of HSPA increases and the data costs fall there is little doubt, in my mind, that HSPA will replace something like 60% of the current ADSL1 and ADSL2 user base in Australia within 2 years. Trackbacks
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HSPA & VOIP need to work, "out of the box" so we can finally ditch the old PSTN line forever.
other considerations- - price - below $60 pm - 10GB+ included usage allowances - speed equivilant to ADSL1 8Mbit - a suitable ALL in ONE - 3G modem / 4 port router / with built in Voip / wireless Lan. -- is their such a unit ? - Seamless VOIP over multiple std home phonesets is a major consideration also. Comments (2)
I agree with
"- a suitable ALL in ONE - 3G modem / 4 port router / with built in Voip / wireless Lan. -- is their such a unit ?" An all in one 3g modem/wireless router/voip ata would mean I could start shifting people to your service tomorrow. Is there any sign of finding one from a supplier? Even if it was say $350. I've searched and found that most solutions require the usb modem, an ata and a separate router. To me that is the only thing holding you back at the moment. I'm sure improved data plans will come in time. Comment (1)
We keep looking.
We have found the 'perfect box' but unfortunately the price is far from perfect. Comments (8)
"We have found the 'perfect box' but unfortunately the price is far from perfect."
And that would be? As many are looking, whatever the cost. Comment (1)
It's a new (unreleased) Netcomm box - cost retail around $600.00.
Comments (8)
I'm certainly your target market (ADSL2 throttled to 1.5Mb due to poor line quality even though close the exchange), eager to change when the price/download limit suits. That would probably be now if I was setting up from scratch but I'm on an older exetel plan with a nice download limit with investment in ADSL2 router/modem etc. And I'd probably also be waiting for the wi-fi router based solution like the other poster.
But I'm interested to know if there is ever any talk of "is there enough spectrum out there if everyone thought it was a good idea to use HSPA for their broadband?" or is that not a concern in the slightest. Comment (1)
I simply don't know the answer to the spectrum 'amount of availability' issue.
When I was in the centre of London mid last year I had no problems with getting close to full speeds day and night. I'm assuming that the usage in such a densely populated area was pretty high (even if only by tourists like me). Elsewhere in the EU no-one seems to be concerned about spectrum availability. Comments (8)
What do you think will be the carriers' reactions when significant numbers of customers start switching away from $50-100/month "cap" plans down to $20-40/month HSPA data plans and migrate to VoIP permanently?
Do your HSPA contracts specify any SLAs wrt jitter? Seems like something a wounded bull would mess with when their ARPUs start falling... Comment (1)
Who knows what the mobile carriers will do?
They will try their best to prevent it and then...... I have no idea. I can't comment on contractual issues. Comments (8)
Any comments on the "Pennysim" product that PT are about to launch?
Regards, Harry. Comment (1)
-- john,, im excited --
[ in the big kev voice ] -- today i went throught a setup installation of voip over exetel hspa broadband for one of the people i had refered to exetel hspa plans. he wanted to setup voip to work over his exetel hspa broadband connection whilst he was travelling round au for the next 12 months. he choose a softphone for his laptop x-lite but found it does not support g729 codec which meant he was chewing up valueable usage at 30KB/s -- this is just not acceptable on hspa plans .. however got him to upgrade to bria the x-lite upgraded program with g729 codec and a usage of only 4KB/s and he is totally stoked. i started testing it with him - with him making calls to me over exetel hspa wireless bb --- and damn the call quality was perfect -- no lag -- no echo -- PERFECT.. If we where able to achieve such a perfect phonecall connection over HSPA .. ALL EXETEL NEEDS TO DO TO WIPEOUT THE OLD PSTN PHONELINE IS A GOOD INTEGRATED - 3G modem / VOIP / ROUTER / WIRELESS LAN . IT was that good for phone quality .. I would pay $300 for such an integrated unit. $600 for the netcomm is out of the ballpark --- but if they get a customer oriented price point of $300 per unit to end users they might corner the market in 18 months and the bonus is they may actually shake Telstra to the core ------- Telstra cant keep ripping us all off for ever. Comments (2)
We have been looking for the perfect box for almost as we have been looking for the perfect HSPA solution.
They are both 'closer'. Comments (8)
I have to disagree with the costing of ULL being excessive but not because of anything Telstra has done, they want it much higher.
It is very cheap because the price is mandated by the ACCC and would be very close to Telstra's cost to provide. Think about what you are getting for $16 a month? Access to millions of customers homes direct and the ability to provide POTS and BB. Just line rental would cover all your costs and more. It is such a good deal that many ISPs with DSLAMS do not want an NBN. Comment (1)
Everyone can have their view - I think $16.00 is a ludicrously high charge for a piece of copper and its ongoing maintenance.
However HSPA makes the situation irrelevant. Comments (8)
Well, it is TWO pieces of copper :-p
But I agree, it was put in the ground decades ago, and the only maintenance Telstra ever seems to do to it is reconnect it when someone digs it up. I've had so many issues with noise over copper lines over the years (especially during rain) that I would love to switch to something else permanently. Bring on high-speed HSPA with reliable speeds of 5Mbps/500Kbps+ and I would be very happy. My biggest issue with HSPA to date are the modems (at least from Huawei) freezing after a couple of hours of usage and requiring a reconnect. If the reconnect happened automatically, I would be OK, but it requires me to actually detect the fact the connection has failed and reconnect it. Not good for an always-on VoIP solution (although I've not tried any of the 3G routers, maybe they are better at detecting failed connections). Comment (1)
I haven't found that and I leave my laptop 'permanently' on.
It sounds (bearing in mind my total lack of technical competence) like a heat problem. Perhaps you could contact Brendon about getting a replacement to see if it's endemic or just a problem with your particular unit? (brendonc@exetel.com.au) Comments (8)
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