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.