John Linton ......or there really is no fool like an old fool?
I have always believed that wireless broadband was going to play an increasingly important role in the delivery of data services to residential end users. Not exactly an exclusive insight in to technology development but at least it ensured that Exetel has made ongoing efforts to provide alternatives to the views that only 'NBN2' will provide a suitable transit for Australian's future data needs. To date, Exetel has made little progress in making wireless services a major part of our customer base or revenue but it does continue to increase and the customer base is very stable with many of our earliest wireless users still with us. We continue to try and find ways to provide wireless services to more lower download users and we will release new wireless plans next week.
The new wireless plans will be simple re-sell of Optus own Layer 3 retail plans with the differentiation being we will use the Optus wholesale commissions to reduce the cost to the customer and will also add the benefits of the Exetel inclusions, very good wireless support and back end user facilities. By doing this we can offer 5 gbytes of 'traffic' for $25.00 a month which would currently exceed the traffic requirements of 35% of our current users at 50% of our current pricing. I would think that this new lower price per gb level coupled with the ongoing upgrading of the Optus broadband network would have a wider appeal than our current premium services - which are still selling very solidly with almost no churn away.
Irrespective of what vested interests or just plain stupid/pig ignorant people may say the steady progress of wireless broadband is inevitable as prices decrease and speeds increase. A colleague sent me a slightly more detailed version of the US position yesterday:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/021011-obama-goal-98-percent-of.html
which gives a sensible view of where 4G/LTE is going and how all encompassing it's usefulness is 'national' broadband deployments.
In terms of the "tower danger" alarmist statements of the equally ignorant the future technologies use much smaller and far less environmentaly intrusive devices:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wireless-advances-could-mean-no-more-mobile-towers-20110214-1asij.html
It also is a chilling indication of the dangers of picking 'winners' when making investment decisions. Both Optus and Telstra will continue their 'war' with each other to build market shares in the various mobile markets one of which is, of course, mobile data services. At $25.00 for 5 gbytes the latest wireless broad band offer would exceed the requirements of a minimum of 35% of Exetel's current ADSL users and, in the case of the ADSL1 users also exceed the speeds they have available to them. In case that statement didn't register:
In February 2011 35% Of Exetel's Current Users Can Get More Downloads At Greater Speeds For Less Monthly Cost than Any Other Supplier Including Exetel Can Offer Via ADSL. They can save even more money by ditching the PSTN line as an added bonus.
To put that statement in true perspective try thinking back two and a half years to the speed/price/availability/reliability/latency of wireless broadband services and compare it to today. THEN go forward two and a half years and guesstimate what the price/speed/latency/availability will be then.
If you were a vaguely sensible person with some basic understanding of markets and technologies you would pause for quite a while before making pronouncements on what you would use a fibre connection for and what you would use a wireless connection for. Unless you were very, very stupid you would reach the conclusion that the only advantage that fibre might have, for residential users, would be for 'entertainment' services currently delivered over FoxTel and similar services. While no-one can really accurately predict the future in terms of such complex scenarios involving as they do user perception and marketing lies the reality is certainly going to be that some percentage of data users will increasingly prefer lower cost wireless services to any sort of expensive wire line services. The inflexibility of a government monopoly will make that a certainty that has decided that speed is more important than price for 100% of all residential data users simply ignores market reality - based on 4,000 years of end user buying decision making.
I will be very interested to see how 5 gbyte wireless broadband plans for $25.00 fare against ADSL2 in the market places of early 2011.