Ideas & Opinions
Can mobile broadband kill the landline?
By JBC on 14 May 2009
GLOBAL – It’s well known that emerging markets are skipping the concept of landlines and jumping straight to mobiles to connect and share. In fact, the majority of the global population will first experience the Internet on their phone, rather than a PC. Does this set the stage for the future, or is it something confined only to countries where it’s a need, rather than a desire? Previously, I would have said the latter, but something I heard the other day is making me think it could well be the former.
Talking to my Mum, she asked me about mobile broadband. The reason? Her friend Mary is considering ditching her landline and getting a mobile broadband dongle for her laptop, and using her mobile for all her calls. She’s the only Internet user in her house (grown up kids have now left home and the husband would rather play golf). If this was India or Africa, we might not be too surprised (in fact, it wouldn’t really be a question) but Mary lives in southern Ireland. What’s more, she’s what we might politely call mature, not a young digital native.
I mentioned this to Mike and he described the notion as crazy. Initially. Then he thought about it and the idea started to resonate. One of the biggest challenges for Internet access in Ireland, given the layout of the population outside of Dublin is the distance people live from the local exchange. My mother-in-law gets 128k over ADSL, simply because she lives at the end of a peninsula, and a long way from the exchange. I’m now thinking of advising her to ditch her broadband and get a mobile dongle. Not only would it be cheaper, but she would get faster, better coverage.
Right now I’m in the process of signing up for 50MB broadband at home. So the notion of ditching that in favour of mobile broadband simply doesn’t work. That said, at work we don’t use desk phones, only mobiles, so we are half way there. How long though before mobile broadband proves too irresistible to the likes of me? We may not yet be on the cusp of killing the landline, but surely it can’t be far off.
Photo by dmje
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Tags | mobile broadband
May 14th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Not in the UK. It’s too expensive when compared with Landline broadband. Also the different mobile providers would have to team up for the provisioning of mobile coverage so that the only differentiation would be quality of service. We would have to loose the issue of dead spots with one provider yet good connection with another. If I went to mobile broadband I would want to know my connection would be stable.
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May 14th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Agreed, moble has come a long way. I have a 3 data provision on my phone , i get my hotmail gmail, workmail and workmail (dont ask
) delivered to my mobile device, I can also twitter and facebook and browse the web. ish.
The problem is I have 10 meg at home, I play games and my girlfriend is a designer and works a lot from home. So any high latency commection is out the window there.
I am worried that all this wireless will put us back into the stone ages for streaming HD video and playing games, then when all of ireland is wireless and contention for wavelength is worse than ever, we will be left out in the cold in the digital high tech cloud entertainment media fog comes to our door.
Again it will be the ODTR’s and the “government’s” fault .
F*****S
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May 14th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Ever since remotely reasonable speeds were met, this has entirely been an economic decision. I knew someone who, over five years ago, used a mobile dongle on his desktop computer. He worked in a real estate cooperative of some sort that charged stupid prices for all additional services. So he was able to save a couple bucks off their terrible prices.
Clearly, when pricing drops (and consumers become more aware of what the dongles do) this will take off everywhere. If I only had one computer, I’d use my vzw aircard exclusively (but I have like half a dozen, and VoIP phone, hooked into the network at home).
I like to think the next big step might be making it not impossible to get on. Software is between totally stupid and unusable on every card I have seen. My ideal world would have bridges, so you plug into any ethernet port and get mobile wireless service. That’s clearly too commoditized for any operator, though.
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September 12th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Can mobile broadband kill the landline? At a simple level the answer has to be yes!
If you look at the statisitics for the number of UK consumer taking up pay as you go mobile broadband contracts then the growth is pretty convincing; a quick look at Google trends will show you a massive surge in ‘mobile broadband’ and ‘mobile broadband dongle’ type requests since 2008. Mobile broadband (coupled with free netbook deals) has led to a number of major UK high street stores running out of stock. It all points in the direction mobile broadband taking over from home broadband…..
But does it? It is unclear whether the UK broadband industry is growing its total client base or whether mobile broadband is canibalising the home broadband market.
I would predict that the high street is going to re-push mobile broadband this Xmas. You will again see a surge in sales of pay as you go mobile broadband dongles and ‘free’ laptops.
Is mobile broadband as good as home broadband? – No… The speed and monthly downloads are not yet comparable to home broadband.
In my opinion Mobile broadband is an add on – perfect for business users on the move or students avoiding the costs of a fixed BT-line. Hence, the high ratio of pay as you go sales versus contract sales.
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