The Commerce Commission in New Zealand is an interesting regulator. They have an "inquiring mind" and like to think about the future and what the emerging issues could be.
This contrasts with so much of Australia's policy and regulatory bodies who merely react to events.
The ComCom's latest foray is their study of High Speed Broadband Services: Demand side studies
Commissioner Ross Patterson has made a little video spruiking the conference they are having as part of it.
The conference website is having a few dramas today, but I'm assured it will be fixed tomorrow.
They have some great international speakers lined up and what I consider to be a pretty reliable facilitator/chair (moi!!!!).
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Showing posts with label broadband. Show all posts
Showing posts with label broadband. Show all posts
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
New statistics - old adage
As I foreshadowed the ABS has today released the Internet Activity in Australia data that updates us a year on the ACCC report released last week.
Not that you'd know immediately from the media release which was titled "Mobile wireless connections more popular than DSL". This raises the important question of what we mean by "more popular". What they go on to say is there are now more wireless broadband services than DSL.
The graph they provide on their highlights page is a version of the proportions of internet connections by technology. Mine appears below.
As a proportion DSL looks like it is a technology the use of which is declining. The better picture is obtained by a graph of the actual service numbers by technology, shown below.
Indeed there are more wireless services than DSL, but not actually more than fixed when the 912 thousand cable and fibre services are considered. These are included in Other in the graph - which includes the 106 thousand satellite services. Interestingly both satellite and cable numbers declined over the last half year while DSL numbers continued to increase.
But popularity implies use not just existence. And it is here that the information noted with such relish in the ACCC's report becomes important.
The amount of data downloaded per service (the data is all data for the preceding three months) continues to rise rapidly for fixed broadband services but is relatively static for wireless. To put it into overall context - 254,947 terabytes were downloaded by fixed customers, while only 19,149 terabytes were downloaded by wireless.
I know which I would choose to define as popular.
Finally for this post I continue to wonder about the veracity of the ABS statistic. It is derived from data provided by ISPs, but the latest release has for the irst time in two and a half years revealed the number of ISPs by size category with a total of 421. The TIO counted 205 members as straight ISPs and a further 405 as Telephone and Internet Service Providers as at 1 January 2011.
I want to understand the source of that discrepancy.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Not that you'd know immediately from the media release which was titled "Mobile wireless connections more popular than DSL". This raises the important question of what we mean by "more popular". What they go on to say is there are now more wireless broadband services than DSL.
The graph they provide on their highlights page is a version of the proportions of internet connections by technology. Mine appears below.
As a proportion DSL looks like it is a technology the use of which is declining. The better picture is obtained by a graph of the actual service numbers by technology, shown below.
Indeed there are more wireless services than DSL, but not actually more than fixed when the 912 thousand cable and fibre services are considered. These are included in Other in the graph - which includes the 106 thousand satellite services. Interestingly both satellite and cable numbers declined over the last half year while DSL numbers continued to increase.
But popularity implies use not just existence. And it is here that the information noted with such relish in the ACCC's report becomes important.
The amount of data downloaded per service (the data is all data for the preceding three months) continues to rise rapidly for fixed broadband services but is relatively static for wireless. To put it into overall context - 254,947 terabytes were downloaded by fixed customers, while only 19,149 terabytes were downloaded by wireless.
I know which I would choose to define as popular.
Finally for this post I continue to wonder about the veracity of the ABS statistic. It is derived from data provided by ISPs, but the latest release has for the irst time in two and a half years revealed the number of ISPs by size category with a total of 421. The TIO counted 205 members as straight ISPs and a further 405 as Telephone and Internet Service Providers as at 1 January 2011.
I want to understand the source of that discrepancy.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)