Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Whatever that number is, it certainly growing fast and if Ericsson is right, 80 percent of global Internet subscribers will connect via mobile broadband instead of fixed by 2013.
Ericsson CTO for North Western Europe, John Cunliffe, was quoted by Total Telecom saying: "That includes people who have abandoned their fixed-line connection in favour of mobile broadband, or are new broadband."
He contends that ease of installation will be a big driver. '"Installation of a fixed connection into the customer premises is a nightmare for both the consumer and the service provider, compared to a mobile connection which self-installs and automatically connects to the network."
He has a point. And of course he touts the impressive speed numbers that the mobile industry is increasingly talking about: 21Mbps on HSPA today and 160Mbps on LTE tomorrow.
Ericsson has every reason to be bullish, but as I commented earlier, the great unanswered question is the ability of these technologies to cost effectively support large numbers of users and to get the spectrum they need to do so. Unless there is ample spectrum, economics dictates that as the utility of and demand for it increases so does its price.
These are big unanswered questions which I put to Ovum analyst Nathan Burley in the wake of his recent comment that 'take-up of mobile broadband in Australia has been extraordinary. Ovum estimates there were over one million mobile broadband connections to PCs at June 2008."
His response was in part encouraging an in part not so. Rather worryingly he said: "My discussions with the some mobile operators show that they don't even know what the real costs of providing these services. This problem is amplified by the disconnect between operator engineering and marketing departments,"
Very similar comments were made by Qualcomm's president Southeast Asia/Pacific, John Stefanac, at a briefing in Sydney this week.
}On a more positive note, Burley said: "Ovum's view is that 3G networks can handle significant growth but operator margins will decline with the continued investment required to support growth. Additionally, although spectrum is clearly an issue, operators still have lots to play with...Qualcomm is happy to offload 10MHz of prime 3G spectrum in Australia cities if someone wants to buy it. Also by the time spectrum is a big enough issue 2.6GHz and 700MHz will come along with LTE enhancements as well."
Does this mean that the NBN will be a $8 billion white elephant? Time wil tell.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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