John Linton ....as a percentage of total mobile revenue despite the same unknowledgeable people who continue to mouth the mantra of "there will never be enough spectrum".
My somewhat bizarre week finally ended (as so many people in the Australian communications industry still apparently have the luxury of only needing a five day week to achieve their working life objectives) with very little progress made but at least no ground lost in areas that I was afraid might happen. A colleague sent me this yesterday:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Clears-way-forward-may-be-with-LTE-not-WiMAX/1281012840
which prompted me to have another look (which I do periodically) at the general reporting in the US communications media about the current status of wireless in the USA. I should have done this a few days ago following Optus responses to Telstra's recent moves in the wireless broadband offering stakes. I didn't find much change to when I first spent 'serious time' examining what I could find a month or so ago other than various indications that revenue from data services on mobile telephone handsets is expected to exceed voice call revenues by early 2011.The referenced article gives some indications as to why this is happening - faster speed over wireless than is being generally achieved via wire line services.
I had previously seen this article:
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/223579,data-revenue-drives-hutchisons-profits.aspx
which seems to mirror the USA carrier's projections so there is little doubt about the trend.
Exetel have not made any real progress in establishing wireless broadband as a replacement for wire line services despite the various efforts we have made to date. Sometimes I despair that we ever will but that doesn't change my view that wireless is going to achieve that status sometime in the not too distant future. I think Optus new plans are beginning to get there though there remains a way to go. We would have expected to have made new wireless broadband plans available before now but that frustratingly difficult road is a particularly tortuous path....at least for us. However we will, stubbornly, pursue the target of providing a wireless broadband service that is lower cost than a wire line service in areas where naked ADSL2 is not available until we are able to do that.....because it is the only sensible solution.
I think that the current Optus plans are getting close to greater penetration of the lower end ADSL user especialy if the 'magic box' becomes a reality (remember that? HSPA chip set/ATA with two VoIP ports/PSTN port/ wifi/full routing) for sub $200.00 retail). We haven't given up on it but have made little progress in finding such a box over the past year and are not prepared to take the risk on a $300.00 retail box. We are continuing to discuss a much better priced wireless broadband offering with an alternate provider to Optus as it seems less and less likely that Optus can provide a suitable service to companies of Exetel's size.
As LTE becomes more widely available the 'speed' issues will become a non event and the recent Optus announcements show that the price issues will similarly 'disappear' over time. What that 'time' will be is not known but even to the 'wireless wallopers' it must be becoming obvious that it will now actually happen for the majority of internet users who don't download more than 10 gb per month which, in Exetel's customer base is 50%.
2010 is a pretty scary year in terms of change. 2011 may well make 2010 look like a period of stability.
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