John Linton's Personal Musings

John Linton

....unless you happen to be a mobile carrier in which case they need to stay the same or increase.

I fell asleep reading this report last night:

http://www.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/display.asp?sf1=identifiers&st1=9789264059849

and a couple of details are summarised here:

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26893/127/

..at least details that relate to last year's HSPA pricing in the EU and the other OECD countries. I am currently looking for as much information as I can find on HSPA pricing as I do some preparation for our trip to the UK at the end of this month as I seem to be able to find out far more detail about the operation of HSPA from my contacts in the UK, and the UK technical media and 'conferences' than I can ever get from our Australian supplier. The pricing information in this report is already out of date (as you would expect) but the end user trend information is what is most valuable - at least to me.

I will be doing my limited/personal use testing of how HSPA may have improved since we were in the EU last year by simply using the same service I used last year and comparing the performance in the various different coverage locations. That has real meaning other than to give some sort of rough idea about what the actual service is like as judged by a sensible user who has some sensible base comparison data. I am going to try to get some 'live testing' of LTE if I can manage it. I understand that my personal testing is of very limited value but it gives me a basis for understanding what might happen in Australia.

I already have some current wholesale pricing which I obtained from 'standard' sources and I have discussed the rates with my acquaintances with whom we are considering doing business. The wholesale rates for data are roughly one half of the prices we are paying in Australia and the cost of Huawei 'sticks' are less than half even at the pitiful usage levels we asked the prices to be based on. For once the "Australia's huge distances" simply don't hold any water because the distances in the UK and the rest of Europe are similar as far as their highway systems are concerned and, obviously, in cities and suburbs there is no difference at all. There are many more users but that makes little difference and certainly can't account for pricing that is more than double in Australia.

Australia's pricing, both residential and wholesale, is simply too high and is the deterrent to a faster take up and therefore a more balanced user type spread which of itself mitigates the current problems of providing a more usable pricing - and I understand that is a selfish view point of a tiny wholesaler and is irrelevant - but it's important to us. What are the chances of the wholesale pricing improving for companies such as Exetel?  I would think not great unless we can build some much higher usage volumes and by "much higher" I mean a 30 to 50 times what we do today. My main purpose of looking at the HSPA opportunities in the UK is to get a much better idea how to position a wholesaled HSPA offering so that those sorts of volumes could be possible in Australia.

I think if HSPA prices in Australia were lower then the take up would be tenfold but I have no idea of the actual costings of delivering the service and how possible the spectrum costs will ever allow that to be. I am going to spend some real time while I am in London to get a detailed (full day) technical briefing on the cost components of delivering HSPA services o that I can understand what issues may be involved in pricing a service in Australia so that I am better prepared to understand the current Australian pricing than I have been to date. I will have to go to Germany to do that but it will be combined with a hands on testing of LTE in a 'live environment' so it should be well worth taking the time to do.

Our objective is to get the retail price of HSPA data in Australia from Exetel down to 1.1 cents per mb in a realistic time frame and I think the coming month in the UK will go a long way towards determining how possible that may be.