[LINK] Wireless Internet Popular in Australia

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Richard Chirgwin
> Sent: Tuesday, 21 September 2010 1:03 PM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Wireless Internet Popular in Australia
> 
> 
>   Stil - this would appear to be "all wireless types". However, since 
> the ABS gives subscribers as 3.5 million mobile and 33k fixed, the 
> difference may be moot!
> 
> RC

Well we know that the Fixed Wireless numbers a wrong to start with.
Excluding USB dongles for laptop and netbooks [2G, 3G] (arguably fixed
wireless usage as opposed to mobile phone based IP) and concentrating
only on unwired: 

http://thebernoullitrial.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/australian-isp-market-
share-2009-2010/

Suggested the numbers for unwired alone were 131,103 in December 2009
indicating growth from a 2005 Zdnet article claiming 75,000 subscribers

http://www.zdnet.com.au/unwired-shareholders-go-slow-on-seven-takeover-b
id-339283249.htm

An electronic lodgement to ASIC by the Seven Group... suggests that 

Quote/ FY10 Revenue was $25.1m, down 26% from FY09 due to a decline in
Unwired subscribers /Quote

http://www.sevengroup.com.au/_uploads/documents/sevengroup/Investor%20Pr
esentation%20for%20the%20Year%20Ended%2030%20June%202010.pdf


> On 21/09/10 10:34 AM, Stilgherrian wrote:
> > On 21/09/2010, at 9:43 AM, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> >>   Looking at the ABS data itself, I'll correct. I'm not working 
> >> through the whole exercise, but:
> >>
> >> Wireless users - 3.5 million
> >> Wireless downloads - 13.3 thousand TB
> >>
> >> DSL - 4.2 million users
> >> DSL downloads - 142 thousand TB
> > Is that "wireless" just the mobile wireless, or all wireless types?
> >
> > Stil
> >


Paul Budde, suggested in 2008 (pre the NBN announcement) that:

http://www.budde.com.au/Research/2008-Australia-Fixed-Mobile-Telecoms-St
atistics-tables-only.html

Quote/
Wireless broadband

The fact that progress in wireless broadband is so painfully slow is
creating anxiety in the market. The reality is that mobile voice and SMS
still generate 90% of mobile revenues in coming years. Full-blown,
end-to-end IP-based wireless broadband infrastructure will not be in
place until 2012-2015. So the changeover, especially over the next few
years, will remain rather slow, with an initial change starting perhaps
later in 2009 when Optus has its nationwide 3G HSDPA network in place.
Nevertheless we are seeing a real explosion in mobile wireless
broadband. People are starting to take up an extra subscription: one for
voice one for data. This will continue for a while before we see more
combined offerings. 

And...

Market Outlook to 2018

The industry is currently experiencing rebalancing and cannibalisation,
but the underlying growth factors remain high and demand for high-speed
infrastructure will outperform supply. This means significant growth in
new IP-based NGN systems. That, in turn, will open up the market for
digital media services, applications, video content hosting and
distribution. By the end of 2018, FttH and wireless broadband will be
widely available and will be used by the telecoms, IT and media
industries. 

/Quote

Of course we have covered the lack of spectrum and/or the need for
thousands of towers to supplant FTTH with wireless in previous threads
and Paul obviously knows how to calculate spectrum versus users times
bandwidth. 



TomK