What future for the NBN when customers want mobile broadband?

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 05 August 2009 06:26

Opinion and Analysis

Whenever Australia's National Broadband Network is held up as a threat to its business, Telstra likes to remind us that, at the end of the day customers decide which services and networks prosper and which languish. If those customers choose mobile broadband services, what future then for the NBN?

This is not idle speculation it is a scenario that research and consulting firm Strand Consulting sees as highly likely and for which it claims to have already found considerable supporting evidence.

"If we examine how the market is developing around the world, there is no doubt that customers want individual mobile broadband solutions and that an increasing number of customers are already discontinuing their existing ADSL connections and switching to mobile solutions instead," Strand says.

"In countries like Norway, Finland, Sweden and now also Denmark, the number of ADSL connections is decreasing. In a country like Austria, over 35 percent of all broadband connections are now mobile and the number for Slovakia is 30 percent...Fifteen percent of all Danish broadband connections are mobile, 20 percent of the Swedish and Finnish are mobile and 13 percent of the Norwegian broadband connections are mobile."

And it is not just slower DSL services being shunned in favour of mobile broadband, according to Strand. "In 2008, each time one Dane chose fibre, five chose mobile broadband and we are currently seeing monthly sales of between 18,000 and 20,000 mobile broadband connections in Denmark - that has a population of 5.5 million." (However Strand does not say how many Danes are able to choose fibre).

Another research firm ABI Research, while not looking at the growth of mobile broadband at the expense of fixed, has come up with some astonishing growth predictions for mobile broadband: that by 2014 the monthly volume of mobile data traffic will exceed the annual volume for 2008. It estimates that nearly 74 percent of this will be from Web and Internet access and 26 percent will come from audio and video streaming.

Strand continues: "In many countries the fibre industry is lobbying for state subsidies to roll out fibre and it does seem like the fibre market players believe that the state should prioritise broadband via fibre higher than other types of technologies (copper, coax, mobile etc). We would like to ask why fibre should have special treatment compared to other broadband technologies? Why should companies focusing on broadband via WCDMA/LTE be punished for choosing fibre in the sky, rather than fibre in the ground?"

In Australia the fibre industry does no have to lobby for a state subsidy: the state is determined to give the money away!


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