John Linton
Anyone who was around in the early days of the introduction of mobile telephony in Australia would be unsurprised at the predictions by the Telstra CEO reported here:
http://www.commsday.com/node/631
Perhaps the only question would be whether his quoted time frame is too conservative. While the percentage of the market that sees internet as only being something that is used to massively download other people's property as fast as possible and who decry HSPA as "too expensive" and "too slow" for their needs, they only represent a relatively tiny percentage of the market places that use internet as an essential tool for the education, personal or business lives - the figure of "over 1,000,000 HSPA users (in less than 2 years) compared to 2,500,000 wire line broadband users (in more than 7 years) is an adequate validation of that view.
Perhaps, one of the reasons for the ABS reporting a marginal decline in ADSL users concurrently with a steepening increase in the number of HSPA users is that the awareness of of the benefits of HSPA are now growing more rapidly - particularly in regional Australia (as well as the more obvious trends in business usage for travelling users). Irrespective of the ABS reports that make the growing use of HSPA very obvious there is the plain fact that (like mobile telephony back in the early 1990s) the sheer convenience of HSPA plus the ever lower costs of using it is producing a more rapid take up of a technology than has ever previously occurred in Australia and I suspect anywhere else in the world.
The 'entry cost' is still much too high (if not for the end user then certainly for the provider) with modem prices in Australia still 4 - 5 times more expensive than the EU, the USA and most parts of Asia and the per gb costs more than double - but that is beginning to change. The modem price will be 'solved' some time in the first half of 2010 as more note book/laptop manufacturers build the HSPA chipset into their products and as the cutting edge router manufacturers do the same. Exetel, which has been looking for a router/ata/hspa chipset product for around two years has seen the prices for such devices fall from over $A500.00 to around $A250.00 to the latest price offered this week of $A150.00 and doubtless it will continue to fall as well as the functionality increasing - as has been the way with technology since some bright spark ten thousand or so years ago 'invented' the wheel.
Exetel's efforts to build our HSPA business has proceeded much slower than we had planned for several different reasons (mainly my stupidity - but not entirely) but in October it will reach around 20% of total broad band applications for the first time and, if we correct some of the stupidities on my part, it may well continue to grow more rapidly from now - if only because of the trends noted by Mr Thodey in the cited article and if the next ABS report shows a continuing overall rapid growth. One of the key drivers for an even more rapid 'up take' of HSPA than is currently being achieved relates to the use of VoIP over HSPA (which has driven our desire to source a 'magic box' for under $A100.00) because if VoIP can be implemented cost effectively over HSPA then the line rental cost can be done away with for all but the intensely cautious users which gives an extra $30.00 or so dollars 'saving' by using HSPA which even at today's high data rates provides an additional 3 - 4 gb of monthly downloads.
Irrespective of what Exetel manages to achieve in the next phase of our attempts to move a larger proportion of our residential business from ADSL to HSPA the efforts by the mobile carriers themselves will ensure that HSPA continue to grow as rapidly as they can deploy the infrastructure to cater for the demand. As Telstra now notes, the ability to deliver the fibre back haul is a key proviso not only for the HSPA carriers but, as even I pointed out some two years ago, it affects the nonsensical 'NBN1' and now 'NBN2' nonsense being pursued by Krudd and co. A 7.2 mbps HSPA service ANYWHERE in Regional and Rural Australia in sight of a mobile tower 'TODAY' at around $A30.00 per month for 5 gb makes an 'NBN' of whatever number pretty unnecessary.....for a huge slice of the marketplace.
HSPA remains, for the vast majority of rural and regional Australian users the best possible option for today and the coming years - and taxpayers don't have to provide one cent for that to be the case nor do the end users have to wait who knows how long to get it.
Meanwhile those ISPs who borrowed heavily to install their own DSLAMs in Telstra's exchanges can, as Harry Chapin once observed (slightly modified personal pronoun) - "They watch the metal rusting, they watch the time pass by".