Spectrum of Greed

Voice/data from 2008 to 2012

While I groused about the lousy percentage of mobile broadband customers that we have in the US, I didn’t offer any solutions - what a loser I am!  So I have determined to do some research on markets in the rest of the world and how they are coping with this rapidly changing technology called wireless.  From this information I will formulate some suggestions and pass them along to our new administration so that they can quickly implement them, save our economy and fix our wireless ills all in the first 4 years of our new president.  Great plan, eh? I determined from some initial research that the Asia / Pacific region, and specifically Hong Kong, would be an excellent starting point for my research.

I found a great source of information - turns out that IDC does scads of research papers on just this type of thing - Surveys - forecasts - my mind was doing cart wheels anticipating all the incredible information that could be used to fix our current wireless situation.  I clicked the link to get the first report and POW!  Got some major sticker shock - $5,000 and the report could be mine.  Turns out the others were identically priced.  Must be REALLY good information.  So if anyone is willing to pony up 5 Grand so I can take a look at this excellent info, I would be eternally grateful.

In the mean time, I will share a couple of little factoids I was able to glean just from the teaser information they provide to get you to lay down 5 G’s.  For instance, in their forecast of wireless business in Asia / Pacific from 2008 - 2012, they show them starting at about the same percentage of voice to data revenue as us, 20% data, 80% voice.  (Remember, only 13% of our mobile customers in the US have an unlimited data plan, but the fastest revenue generator for wireless data is text messaging, which uses next to no data and in fact is not even running on the IP network)  By 2012, they have around 60% of their total wireless traffic predicted as data, and a plateau of voice traffic beginning in 2010 and comprising around 40% of total wireless traffic by 2012. (see my cool graphic copied from the IDC forecast).  I want the kind of growth in our wireless data that APEC is getting - Quote from IDC report by Alex Chau, “3G subscribers grew 70% in 2007.”

I am anticipating learning a great deal here, and in turn passing along lots of cool information on what the rest of the world gets that we don’t.  A couple of teasers - any idea what a WIP is? (wireless internet phone - whoo hoo!)  How about Globe 7, and their plan for flat rate plans covering 25 countries?  Don’t try taking your data enabled phone out of the country unless you want the electronic equivalent of midnight express happening to your bill!  Last teaser - the $20 cell phone - made possible by a US company, targeted at ‘emerging’ economies.