John Linton
Exetel will begin doing 'field testing' of the Optus HSPA service today and over the coming 4 weeks will test the service in every State and the ACT (but probably not the NT as we don't have suitable testers there). While our, by necessity limited testing will not be definitive it is being done to ensure we understand the current contentions (if there are any) and other factors relating to this stage of Optus' HSPA roll out. Our testing to date has shown the expected mix of results and, if anything, the results are not as good as we had expected - and certainly not as good as I achieved throughout the UK using TMobile.
This is not particularly worrying at this time as Optus has made many public statmements on the status of its roll out and how, at this stage, there is a lot of building and upgrading to be completed before the end of this calendar year and even more to follow in the 2009 calendar year when Optus is saying it will push the HSPA service into the remaining rural areas of Australia. While it's seldom wise to believe what any carrier says about the future there is little doubt that the competition between the three major mobile carriers plus Three will ensure that none of those carriers will want to lag too far behind in the delivery of faster speeds and increasingly wider coverage.
There was an article in The Age yesterday:
http://business.theage.com.au/business/optus-making-up-lost-ground-on-the-3g-battlefield-20080818-3x6n.html
that references Optus's disadvantages in timeliness to market with 3G and their efforts to close the gap that they allowed Telstra to build up. There are scant facts in this piece but it does gain emphasise how iportant 3G is becoming vis a vis ADSL and cable broadband - not least in the amount of spending all mobile companies are doing compared to the spending on ADSL2 infrastructures. Some idea of the relative importance of HSPA compared to ADSL2 (at least in the eyes of the carriers) can be guaged from the amounts of money they are committing to broadband over mobile compared to the amount of money they are committing to ADSL2.
The other telling point, if you want to look at it that way, is that the three major mobile carriers are all committing to HSPA coverage of "98% of Australia's popultion via HSPA" compared to the largest ADSL2 roll out by Telstra of 900+ exchanges (out of around 5,000) with the next largest carrier being Optus with a little over 400 exchanges. Right now HSPA speeds are far less than ADSL2 and will remain that way for around 2 years - and 2 years assumes that all the 'promises' regarding higher speeds of HSPA and then LTE are actually delivered over that time frame.
However, as I said some 10 months ago (and throughout my 2 year 'quest' to find a sensible and cost/effective HSPA solution for Exetel) there is little doubt that a sensibly dimensioned HSPA service makes a NBN 'tender' not only redundant but technologically a dinosaur that would be obsolete before it was even half built out. I wonder whether it's too late for CK and ESS to 'wrench' their current 'tender' process round so any money the feds dish out could go to a faster delivery of LTE to the majority of Australians?
No....that would be too sensible.....
I was interested to read about the new 'slimmed down' pricing that both Optus and Vodafone have announced for their own retail HSPA services:
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24202957-15306,00.html
and, of course, I worry about whether when Exetel gets to be able to deliver the HSPA services we plan that the analysis we have done about how to make a wholesaler's value adds work effectively Optus and Vodafone won't have, again, cannibalised the HSPA service offerings. If I'm reading the signs correctly they are in the process of rapidly abandoning their previous views of how HSPA services will be used and therefore what the actual take up will be for them. This is inevitable (nothing like the reality of money over the counter to administer a cold shower to marketing theory) but it lessens the value of the offerings that we had decided upon and the markets we had selected as being easiest for us to compete in. Pity about that but it was inevitable.
As far as I can see there are only a very few non-carrier HSPA offerings (via wholesale carrier customers) at the moment and most of those are just re-sells of the carrier plans themselves. Layer 2 services (what Exetel will be basing its HSPA services on) have yet to be put in place by Optus and Vodafone has only had them for less than two months which would explain that - mostly. It will be interesting to see how the remainder of the ISPs who still have some realistic revenue from dial up customers address the 'threat' to their previous comfortable view that when dial up customers are ready they will move to their ADSL service? At $15.00, or less if you believe the advertising, those dial up customers can get a much faster HSPA service and use it anywhere they like which makes ANY dial up user crazy not to move to HSPA if they can't afford ADSL and the hassles that often accompany using ADSL.
I think Vodafone and Optus may have finally woken up to the fact that HSPA (at least right now) is truly the way to take over the remaining 3,000,000 (or whatever the real number is) dial up users rather than trying to position the current performance of HSPA as a true competitor to ADSL2. Maybe in 2009 that will be the case but right now HSPA is a real 'silver bullet' to migrate those poor souls still on dial up to a much faster and cheaper service.
I'm looking forward to the 'field trials' of HSPA and even more looking forward to actually finding out whether the assumptions I've held for over 2 years are going to prove to be correct. It will be even more interesting when Optus is able to deliver 7.2 mbps down theoretical speeds.
A recent quote on the future of HSPA/LTE:
Mobile Broadband continues to gain momentum as more and more operators upgrade their 3G networks with HSPA technology and
a growing number of advanced HSPA handsets and modems arrive on the market….. HSPA is the baseline for mobile broadband
globally and has a strong supporting eco-system. GSA confirms that 198 HSDPA networks have entered commercial service in 86
countries, which means that 90% of WCDMA operators have now launched HSPA. Network speeds are evolving with 125 HSPA
networks i.e. 63% supporting peak downlink speeds of 3.6 Mbps or higher, with 45 networks i.e. 22% supporting 7.2 Mbps peak or
higher. 36 HSUPA networks have launched in 27 countries with a further 25 HSUPA network commitments. GSA recently announced
a 150% annual growth in the number of HSPA devices with 637 HSPA devices launched by 110 suppliers, including mobile handsets,
notebook PCs, data cards, embedded modules, USB modems, and wireless routers. HSPA is a mature technology generating
significant traffic and revenue growth and user devices are mainstream. (Source : GSA, 18 May 2008)