[AusNOG] Netflix in AU, break up Go4, or TPG peering breakup?

[Paul Brooks]

On 23/07/2014 11:01 PM, Paul Jones wrote:
>
> So overall I would argue that the market for fixed line connections hasn't ever gone
> backwards, and is never likely to until such times as we can replace "a box" in the
> garage/study with a different box that happens to have a sim card and antenna, and
> have our customers not really notice the difference, either in QOS, $$$, or GB.
>
>  
>
> Wireless is an entirely new and predominantly different market, but it unfortunately
> gets classified in the same category as fixed line. Same with M2M, where a
> gargantuan quota is 300 MB.
>

Indeed.  The ABS stats separate out mobile handsets with data capability from the
'wireless broadband' category, which includes data-only SIM devices, USB sticks etc.

"c) Wireless includes satellite, fixed wireless, mobile wireless via a datacard,
dongle, USB modem or tablet SIM card and other wireless broadband. Excludes data
downloaded via mobile handsets which is reported in the mobile handset chapter. "

So the ABS mobile wireless category includes all the SIM-enabled iPads and probably
SIM-enabled Kindles, which can hardly be described as fixed-line replacements at all.
By including these in the table along with DSL, cable, satellite and other 'one per
structure' technologies hopelessly distorts the usefulness of the statistics and
leaves them wide open for abuse of interpretation.

For all the 'wireless broadband' devices, data use equates to 6 GB per *quarter* to
Dec2013, or 2 GB/month.

Digging deeper, we
find....http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/8153.0Chapter8December%202013
"For the 20.3 million mobile handset subscribers, this equates to 0.5 GB of data
downloaded per subscriber per month."

An average of 2GB/month for data-only devices, and 0.5 GB/month for phone handsets,
indicates to me that these are NOT being primarily used as a replacement for
fixed-line residential broadband services - and probably aren't going to be used for
enabling all the devices in a home to stream Netflix through (to drag this back on topic).

Also - the number of 'mobile wireless' services  *decreased* in the latest half-year
stats, as did fixed wireless and satellite, to the tune of 113,000,   while the number
of real fixed-line services increased 163,000. You could interpret this as fixed
replacing wireless rather than vice versa (I wouldn't).
The number of fixed-line services has never gone backwards - it has slowed as we
approached saturation.

All of which goes to point out that anyone who cites the ABS figures as showing "half
of all Internet connections in Australia are wireless.", or predicting the death of
fixed-line, could read a little deeper.

Paul.





>
> Cheers,
>
> Paul
>
>  
>
> *From:*AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] *On Behalf Of *Robert Hudson
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 23 July 2014 9:37 PM
> *To:* Mark ZZZ Smith
> *Cc:* ausnog at lists.ausnog.net; Paul Brooks
> *Subject:* Re: [AusNOG] Netflix in AU, break up Go4, or TPG peering breakup?
>
>  
>
> On 23 July 2014 20:57, Mark ZZZ Smith <markzzzsmith at yahoo.com.au
> <mailto:markzzzsmith at yahoo.com.au>> wrote:
>
>      
>
>     I still think it is significant that around half of all Internet connections in
>     Australia are wireless.
>
>  
>
> The only thing surprising about that is that the figure you've quoted isn't higher.
>  That said, I find that particular statistic to be pretty useless - and here's why.
>
>  
>
> In my household, I have three wireless broadband connections (two mobile phones with
> data plans, plus a pre-paid 4G WiFi AP) and a single wired connection.  And I don't
> have children who have their own mobile phones or devices - that number could easily
> climb to six or more wireless connections without any significant effort - and
> that's without having extended family in the house - and it's becoming more and more
> common to have more than two generations in a household.
>
>  
>
> Wireless is brilliant for certain things.  Consuming large amounts of data is not
> one of those things (at least not in this market, I acknowledge that the bottleneck
> in Australia isn't the capability of the technology).
>
>  
>
> The consumption of content over wireless in this country is still very small.  It's
> possible to get a ridiculously large quota (I get 150GB a month if memory serves, I
> honestly don't even think about quota on my ADSL service any more, but I know I'm
> WAY below the maximum quota available on basic consumer ADSL services) on wired for
> less than I pay for 1.5GB a month on Telsta 4G (on which I can't even download a
> single DVD ISO without paying stupidly obscene excess data charges - assuming it
> works at all when I'm on the move, given even the best 4G network in the country
> still has black spots and massive congestion issues at times).
>
>  
>
> Back to my first line - what is more interesting than the number of raw wired and
> wireless connections is the volume of data consumed on wired vs wireless connections
> - wireless connections have been relatively static for years in terms of how much
> data is downloaded per month (and have actually gone backwards slightly over the
> last two years), whereas the amount of data consumed by wired connections seems to
> double every couple of years (if even that long) - and I bet if you found
> information on the data produced from wireless and wired connections, it'd be even
> more glaringly obviously biased in favour of wired).
>
>  
>
>
>
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