John Linton
.....continues to reach a wider demographic's needs.
Before Exetel first started providing wireless broadband solutions using the Optus mobile network we asked for some 'volunteers' to do 'real life testing' of the performance they could achieve in various parts of Australia. These kind people (who 'volunteered' via the Exetel forum) did an excellent job of providing feed back to us and to other people who followed that forum thread as to what they were achieving under various conditions and from various locations - some quite remote others around regional towns and a couple in the suburbs of Adelaide and Brisbane.
Over the past two plus years we have kept in touch with them to track their ongoing experiences as the network grew in capacity and capability and as more and more users connected to it. I sent out my quarterly email to the remaining 12 of the original 15 users last week and have now got all of the replies. In summary the results continue to be very positive in every respect with users getting slightly faster speeds than three months ago and have had another three months of operation without any 'down time' or any other network performance issues. Over the two and a half years of usage the average sustained down time speeds have increased from an average of 650 kbps to an average 0f 2.8 mbps together with slightly better latencies - most of this improvement has come in the last twelve months when average speeds have almost doubled from a year ago.
The other significant piece of information from the last quarter's 'survey' was that the remaining three people have canceled their land line since January 2010 with all now using VoIP to make telephone calls. I understand this minute number of users, who are also atypical because they were all 'technically competent' and are now long term users of wireless technology, but it is 'directional' in that the average usage by this small group is less than 3 gb per month (a number that would cover more than 30% of Exetel's current users) and includes three 'rural' families and four 'work from home' duos. By 'abandoning' their telephone line all of these users now spend around 40% less than they used to spend on their previous ADSL1 service (ignoring the lower cost of telephone calls) and have a consistently faster connection.
Current wireless pricing (at least that from Optus to Exetel - it could be quite different in other scenarios) doesn't allow us to offer wireless services at less than around $A15.00 per gb (up and down) so wireless services are not even on the horizon for heavy down loaders or low latency dependent game players but for a very sizeable 'chunk' of today's broadband users it is better than they get in many areas in Australia and it is continuing to get better. I don't know what the LTE testing later this year by both Telstra and Optus will show, let alone when those carriers will make LTE available on their mobile networks, but it seems likely that both speed and latency over wireless will surpass today's ADSL2 performances around Australia sooner rather than later.
Pricing will remain an issue in Australia though that doesn't seem to be the case in the US or in the EU as far as I can tell from the available information. However for users who don't need large downloads wireless looks like it will become the dominant broadband technology sooner rather than later has been 'predicted'. People like me continue to use a wireless service (mine is around 2.5 mbps in my home and somewhat faster when travelling) and my bill seldom exceeds $A15.00 per month for a constantly used service. I would think that there are many other people like me that now only use wireless because it is as fast as they need it to be and it's a fraction of the cost of ADSL.
So 'straws in the wind'....but the approaching 'winter' continues to darken ADSL's skies.
PS: For those people who told me how stupid Exetel was to take Telstra to court to force them to publicly apologise for their unconscionable behaviour - look at page 16 of today's Australian....mealy mouthed for sure - but then ..............
PPS: In closing the case earlier this morning the judge ruled that Testra was to pay Exetel's costs.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4......