Wednesday, January 6. 2010The Year Of Wireless Broadband?John Linton We failed to make much progress in developing viable wireless broadband offerings in 2009 despite putting a lot of effort and, for us, a lot of money into various attempts. We have been told by various sources that our failures were unique and that other suppliers had succeeded in rapidly growing wireless broadband sales across the whole spectrum of Australian marketplaces which made me feel even more unhappy about our own failures. The major reasons for our failures were all my fault in both planning and execution and I have no excuses for making the mistakes I did as I should have known better. But, life and markets move on and as more lower end residential ADSL users begin to realise that giving up their land line isn't the end of civilisation as we know it the market for wireless services continues to expand. We had our best ever wireless order day yesterday (just on double the previous best day) and I would like to think that is an 'omen' for things to come. We have begun the serious re-vamping of our wireless plans and will make a much more serious attempt to get them exactly right for the three different marketplaces we will now pursue and pursue much more vigorously, and much more aggressively than we did in 2009. I would expect the LTE trials by both Optus and Telstra to continue to 'educate' the Australian market on the advantages of wireless broadband if only because there will be some 'oohing and ahhing' as those companies publish the results of those trials - in particular the fact that LTE, in a surprising number of places, will deliver much faster speeds than ADSL2+. Of course that interest needs to be sustained by realistic delivery dates and, as importantly, realistic prices per gb used. I have zero ability to forecast what price and what availability LTE will result in other than expecting that Telstra will attempt to continue to set prices at the sky high level (why would they change the habit of a corporate life time?) and Optus will pursue their established policies of using some form of 'Telstra minus' model - so the end result for LTE itself may not be that exciting for the majority of users....but the wider and wider publicity should push up the sales levels of wireless broadband generally. Three key changes should also help wireless broadband sales. Firstly the cost of the standalone wireless modem will continue to fall as a piece of hardware as more and more laptops/notebooks and more and more routers include the chipset making the necessity of a separate 'modem' redundant. This will 'advantage' Exetel as we have never been able to afford to provide a "free modem" as the carriers and their major retailers do - nice to have the market move in your favour for a change. This will make a major difference in itself. The second reason is that with close to or (depending on the next ABS figures) over 3,000,000 wireless modems already sold the need for a substantial number of people buying wireless modems from Exetel continues to fall each month as new customers for Exetel wireless already have compatible modems from previous purchases or just buy them on eBay. So the ability of the big suppliers to 'bundle' a free wireless modem (and lock the user in to a long contract) will continue to decline as a 'plus' for those suppliers doing it. The third thing, clearly demonstrated in the AT&T figures I cited the other day and partially confirmed by Telstra's revised downwards revenue forecasts for this financial year, is the accelerating move away from wire line usage. The additional 'saving' of the $A30.00 per month cost of a wire line rental (ignoring the high call charges) makes wireless broadband, by definition, $A30.00 a month more appealing IF the customer believes they can effectively use VoIP over their wireless broadband connection. You can be sure that, at least for the time being, Telstra and Optus will not provide a VoIP solution but, of course, there are many providers of VoIP so that won't deter Telstra and Optus wireless broadband buyers from using it. It therefore removes another current advantage of the carriers - their ability to use their own low cost mobile and PSTN call minute costs as a 'bundled' advantage over companies such as Exetel. Perhaps I'm kidding myself but I see these three 'trends' all moving in Exetel's favour and that is an encouragement over the situation in 2009. We do have to find ways of making the wireless plans much more appealing to the marketplaces we are going to 'pursue' and that is really very difficult for us at the moment but as it is essential we will just have to find a way...because I really do think this is going to be the year of breaking the wire line monopoly on delivering data for around 50% of the total broadband marketplace.
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It's a pity there is no easy 'Change your plan' option to move from HSPA M1 - HA to the new WM A plan. As they are both Optus services I assume it's some ludicrous Optus condition. I'm confidant that Exetel wouldn't be so obdurate.
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My daughter's iphone was lost/stolen the other day.....
..and she was absolutely "lost" not having the ability to make/receive calls, look up her email, facebook and search the web, etc... After 2 days she "couldn't stand it any more"... and went out and purchased another iphone. Wireless broadband sure has come to her age group 25-35...... and demographic (young working woman no kids). As you say, John..... wireless broadband is a rapidly expanding market. Harry. Comment (1)
Very fast LTE speeds won't be available 'everywhere' but why Australia needs a government monopoly infrastructure is not really relevant to wireless broadband.
The NBN2 is purely political and completely financially nonsensical...at least based on known information digested by 'experts'. LTE is just yet another ongoing development of a technology that will deliver more to a proportion of infrastructure users and will be delivered at commercially sensible pricing and to commercially sensible demographics - whatever they may eventually prove to be. Comments (4)
How is this going to affect the current government's ambitious NBN2 plans? I would have thought that downloads at a theoretical 100MB/s and good bandwidth would render FTTH useless.
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The problem with any Wireless solution is the fact that it is shared spectrum: if there are too many users trying to connect to the same tower, then you will not get the high speeds that you would expect.
This already happens on the OPTUS HSPA connections, where in Wollongong during the evenings, wireless connections are very unreliable. Of course this can be solved by provisioning enough wireless bandwidth, but as always it comes down to dollars and we just don't have enough popluation to justify the capital spend vs likely income. Comment (1)
I just helped a work colleague sign up to the WM A as she "only needs occasional Internet access from home and doesn't want to pay $30 per month". Interstingly she doesn't have a fixed line at home but uses the Optus business wireless phone line http://smb.optus.com.au/web/ocaportal.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=Template_wRHS&FP=/smallbusiness/telephony/homebusinessplansandrates/wirelesstelephony&site=smallbusiness, which uses the GPRS network but charges VOIP like prices.
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Calls go via the voice channel on the GSM network (not as clear as PSTN). Note the $30 per month access fee (make no calls, you still pay $30) and check out the T&C's - no battery back up and subject to coverage - POTS and MoIP still have legs!
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Of course. However those list prices are negotiable. SHe is paying less than $30 per month and calls are 10c natinal (or maybe she got an introductory deal - can't remember).
However the point was more people are placeing less empahsis on the must have 100% uptime type T&C and happy with a mobile as backup for when primary line fails (be it NDSL or something like this). (and sorry, I said GPRS when it was rightly pointed out as via the GSM network) Comments (2)
Telstra are working on a similar product at the moment also
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Hi John,
why do we have to include the uploads in our usage.. 10GB plans are needed - @ $49.50 pm. No uploads counted. and a small offpeak period where you can download nocharge ,the equivilant of half your peak plan usage from 2-00am till 7-00am. * and no crazy $50 or $100 per GB excess charges. my suggestion $2-00 per GB excess charges. when such a plan turns up I'll be at the front of the que to signup. cheers bill Comment (1)
All of those things would be nice.
None of them are currently remotely possible. Comments (4)
Look slightly further than our shores and you will see broadband not defined so lamentably as "*1.5/0.25 Mega bits-per-second provisioned at '0.1Mbps', or provisioned at '0.01Mbps'-in the case of wireless service + +supplied-with-huge-Excess-fees"; but you see broadband defined more [progressively ?], such as with: "95% of Users Will Not Encounter A Limit"....
For example,. I read United States operator datajack.com aims to suit American customers with, shortly, mobile broadband based on a true 1.4 to 0.7 Mbps unlimited: No Fees No Contract Zero cost Activation, just a $99 'stick' and 43.7780453 Australian dollars running cost. I think this DataJack could be taken for Exetel's wireless cousin overseas it appears so inexpensive. inkeeping with today's blog theme ' might like to add 3G/Datajack to your 'trackings' of technology, read here http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/DataJack-40-A-Month-For-Truly-Unlimited-3G-106176 ,possible some news in ces.cnet.com this week ... Comments (3)
I don't hold myself a particularly credentialed user (maybe a gen'-X'er who seeks value), yet I notice only Two data operators meeting demand in Australia with the "95% of Users will Not Encounter A Limit" rule holding true here, for a price not too far from $A50.00/mth, currently.
a) "Super Fast Premium /100GB $89.99 100GB4 1Mbps/1Mbps" -- you'd never notice the limit Comments (3)
b) "TL-C4 30 Days $85.00"-- 'speed' owned by 'Telstra'- but otherwise No limit
Both a) and b) indicating 'matured' DSL technology. The other couple of references I had, pertinent to wireless taking off this year 1) http://www.teliasonera.com/4g/faq-4g.html# 'TeliaSonera' in Europe July 1, 2010 launches '4G' (LTE) mobile BB comercially to Swedish customers; provisioned at a 0.1 Mbps/user level =30GB that is a DSL type figure. Priced at 599SEK/month it is about $A90.00- not so very cheap, but @$3/gb quickly catching up with fixed line technology. 2) http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/320250/unwired_good_old_fashioned_broadband_access_will_drive_4g ^Which indicates a resurgence of Wimax through Seven Network's VividWireless when the Perth network operator goes live in Autumn this year. Comments (3)
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