What's driving mobile growth? do you believe in the draw of high-speed mobile data? the following are some notes from a EV-DO vendor on mobile applications and some interesting factoids:
1xEV-DO multimedia handsets continue to be the primary method of network access. Several new devices for providing broadband to PCs and laptops were announced last quarter.
More than 98% of EV-DO subscribers use multimedia handsets to access the network. KDDI (Japan) launched three new phones last quarter, doubling its line up of handsets.
According to 3gtoday, more than 66 commercial EV-DO devices were available at the end of September (compared with 45 devices at the end of June 2004).
Axesstel demonstrated the first 1xEV-DO modem that supports Ethernet connectivity to PCs (in addition to USB) at CDG Americas Congress in Miami. This modem makes it easy to share a 1xEV-DO broadband connection with multiple users in a home or enterprise using a standard Ethernet or Wi-Fi router.
Kyocera Wireless launched a dual-band, dual-diversity, 1xEV-DO PC Card (called Passport) with an adjustable, rotating primary antenna for maximum signal strength.
Verizon announced that UPS, the world's largest package delivery service company, is launching a significant sales force automation project and has kicked it off with 3,400 1xEV-DO PC Cards.
KDDI reported that the number of E-books purchased over its network increased 16-fold to 42,000 since the 1xEV-DO network was launched. 1xEV-DO subscribers spend more than $14 a month on additional paid content such as music and books, twice as much as 1xRTT data users. In other interesting news, today's WSJ has
a good piece on Cable & Wireless - (reg required) - the concept not the company. Look
here if you're not registered. This idea has been around for awhile. It was at the heart of Sprint's triple play:
More than 14 million people carry Sprint PCS phones now, but there were no customers in sight when Sprint executives huddled in Westwood in 1993 to talk about how to get a piece of the wireless business.
With an eye toward the cell phone boom that already was occurring overseas and the knowledge that the federal government would soon sell new radio frequency, known as spectrum, Sprint wanted to create a national wireless network that would match its long-distance network.
"No one had thought about national wireless at the time," LeMay said.
In 1994 the Federal Communications Commission made it possible. The agency said it would offer to wireless companies government-controlled radio frequencies previously reserved for military use.
"All of the existing cellular operators opposed it vehemently," said Jay Kitchen, president and chief executive of the Personal Communications Industry Association. "They didn't want PCS to happen for anything, because they didn't want the competition."
Sprint executives knew they could not do it alone. The cash required just to buy spectrum was out of Sprint's reach. After forming a wireless task force that looked at an array of possible partners, Sprint formed an alliance with three cable companies.
Tele-Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. and Cox Communications brought cash to the table. Their cable television services also reached into millions of homes and brought the potential for Sprint to sell local, long-distance and video services to a broad base of new customers.
What became known as the triple play soon fell apart because the cable companies' interests shifted away from telecommunications. Although the cable companies later sold most of their stake, Sprint had the financial backing to be a big player when the FCC began auctioning wireless spectrum in late 1994.More on TimeWarner and wireless from the feature.
