ComReg: Broadband subscribers grow by 6.4%

paulm17781

Apparently we have real growth now...

http://breakingnews.ie/business/mhqlqlauojkf/

cgarvey

Figure 3.1.2 of the ComReg report says it all. DSL subs (as a percentage of total subs) go *down*, while mobile broadband goes up.

You, me, yorema and Uncle Tom know that given the choice the vast majority of people will go for DSL over 3G. Yes, there will be some who will value the nomadic property over the speed/stability, but not too many.

So now, the question is Demand or Availability?

watty

About 5% to maybe 20% max if we are generous want Mobility. The other 80% to 95% (probably closer to 95% than 80%) just want flat rate always on Broadband.

Mobile "Broadband" a la EDGE/3G/HSDPA is not broadband and it's a National Scandal they count it as such. UPC has now upgraded 2/3rds of their cable to Broadband and seeing over 20% penetration where it's available. That's likely to rise as they improve their service and as they now sell BB without demanding a TV sub.

I know plenty of ISPs that will claim availability, not demand is the problem.

Sponge Bob

Mobile BB grew at 20% , traditional BB at only 5%

Growth in GENUINE BB has almost plateaued and could even shrink in Q2 2009 by my reckoning .

crawler

I think what is important is that the overall market shrank. A reflection of foreign nationals moving on to better labour markets and people tightening their belts.

What is needed now is some creative thinking...from ALL

I dont think the market will shrink SB, the (ahem) NBS, Government policy etc SHOULD prevent that but then you never know

Sponge Bob

Emigration is currently far greater than is shown in the official stats. It will be even higher next year .

eg Mobiles are counted if used anytime in the last 6 months . That's one lag indicator that will show declines by Q2 next year...mobile subs.

3g data growth is a sign of many failures, policy and market and regulatory all rolled into one big mess.

It would not be that significant if line rental and llu charges were anywhere reasonable and if people were not so desperate for Always On/BB that they are forced to use that rubbish.

The back of my envelope shows that there are maybe 800 3g cells in Ireland and that each has 3 sectors . Naturally I am open to correction on that if anyone has any more data to hand.

That's 2400 sectors for the whole lot of us .

We have nearly 100 subscribers per ACTIVE SECTOR based on the latest Comreg figures and on the dangerous assumption that the sector has 7.6mbits of airspace ( some are 3mbits) that leaves the users with 76k each ( some are averaging 30k each) .

No wonder 3g is crap although it's a convenient flat rate dialup solution .

It is certainly not Broadband and Comreg knows perfectly well what the sector/cell constraints are .

crawler

I agree with you...

Sadly where BB is not available or too expensive due to addition of line rental costs it leaves little choice for consumers other than to use mobile BB.

It's not all gloom though - 900Mhz in 3G would help as would the digital dividend but neither will happen soon. Spectrum is finite - I wish the world would understand this, when it's full, it's full even with all the fancy techniques to squeeze every last drop

Sponge Bob

A DSL network designed as uncontended at the DSLAM like Smart and Magnet and Homevision are , and if offering an 'up to' 8mbit ENTRY level product, can quite honestly say that they are 100 times faster than 3G .

The reality is that they are 10's of times faster under almost all circumstances .

Sure there are caveats but nowhere like as many caveats as there are in relying on Comreg stats

watty

Sponge Bob wrote: »

We have nearly 100 subscribers per ACTIVE SECTOR based on the latest Comreg figures and on the dangerous assumption that the sector has 7.6mbits of airspace ( some are 3mbits) that leaves the users with 76k each ( some are averaging 30k each) .

No wonder 3g is crap although it's a convenient flat rate dialup solution .

It is certainly not Broadband and Comreg knows perfectly well what the sector/cell constraints are .

At "normal" contention/users actually connect off peak, that would translate to 600kbps to 1400kbps. Which matches my experience. A peak periods it would be much worse.

Also typically a sector won't allow more than 24 or 25 active connections which also means that some people won't connect* but the minimum speed with a good signal is thus closer to 150kbps to 400kbps.

*This is experienced. How many times do you hear reports of "I'm getting 2 or 4 bars but can't browse"?

Even at the 1.4Mbps (off peak typical) to 7.2Mbps (one person only on sector that can count the bolts on mast) the latency is still not Broadband. Rare for it t be better than 120ms. At 250ms because it doesn't do the tricks a Sat connection does, a Web link click to another site can take 2s to 3s to fully load. The via Satellite (860ms typical) web page will do NOTHING on screen for nearly 900ms and then "bang" render very very quickly.

So Broadband "speed" HSDPA can be a worse browsing experience than satellite.