The rise and rise of mobile data usage

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 18 April 2008 07:50

Opinion and Analysis

For some odd reason, Dr Maio Mackay is also “surprised that almost 60% of Australian respondents are willing to pay some fee for unlimited MDS access.”

Why in heaven’s name is this a surprise? Flat rate services benefit the consumer enormously, rather than a ticking clock of charges than can result in some serious bill shock.

But Dr Mackay has an explanation, and says that: “It’s a significant change in mindset that they’re now assigning a certain value to MDS. Generally they’ve been prepared to pay nothing or it’s been in exchange for advertising through a third party model”.

Perhaps people were prepared to pay nothing because there were virtually no decent MDS services available in the past, prices were very high, screens were small and in black and white, information was textual with little graphics, video or audio and phones were slow. But this has all changed.

As for accepting advertising, see the above paragraph for why people weren’t interested in MDS in the first place, and ask yourself if useless services would have been used by anyone, whether with advertising or not. I think you know the answer.

Of note is the study’s finding that “around 80% of people, regardless of age, pay their own mobile phone bill, somewhat debunking the notion that many younger people have their bills paid for by their parents and others by their employers”.

Dr Maio Mackay points out this means “there is usually only a single decision-making point, which is good news for companies.”

Finally, although 60% of respondents pay by monthly plan, capped monthly plans have become more popular than uncapped ones. This is clearly no surprise, capped plans offer seriously better value than non-capped or most pre-paid plans.

Dr Maio Mackay believes this “reflects the bundling that carriers are offering in their price packaging, which again is more conducive to MDS, as a capped plan can include more access to MDS.”

So, what was the methodology used in the study?

m.Net Corporation says that: “The Wireless data services study is an annual online survey in which respondents in participating countries are required to answer a core set of questions. In 2007 Australia, Finland, Greece, Korea, Taiwan and the USA took part.”

The methodology statement continues: “It was conducted in Australia in November 2007 by m.Net and its academic partner the Department of Commence at the University of Adelaide, and comprised 949 local respondents. The results for 2007 were generalisable for the 18-50 age group.”