Wirelessnorth.ca

Sol Trujillo, CEO of Telstra, one of the largest service providers in Australia recently gave an interview on BusinessWeek, highlighting the success they have experienced with Data services, with 80% growth in data revenues! (not including SMS traffic, with 20% growth). So why should anyone in Canada be interested in an Australian network? For one reason, a number within the Rogers fold think there are many similarities between the two nations – geographic, economic and telecom fundamentals (?). So maybe there are a few lessons we need to learn and emulate to achieve similar success in data penetration and usage.

What is interesting to highlight are the reasons for the growth that Telstra has experienced:

• Infrastructure Investment in rolling out a technically superior network, with data rates reaching 14Mbps!
• Application: relevant and practical, that the consumer may actually be interested in. For instance, promoting data applications in outbacks where farmers can monitor their stock/land/crop through video riding off of the network. Given the large tracts of agricultural land with a small population, remote sensing and monitoring is a compelling application.
• Affordable rates : Is it a coincidence that the high data usage and growth being experienced are in some way stimulated by lower data rates? I would like to guess so. Compare the 5cents/Kb in Canada (Rogers) to the .025Cents/Kb offered by Telstra. And this includes “tethered” usage, currently charged at a premium by Rogers.
• Open Access : going beyind the walled-garden approach excercised by operators here to a free reign model. The motto being – give the customers the content they want and are looking for, rather then sandboxing them into content they dont. The success of the internet was not built on portals.

But the most important reasoning of all – believing that a strong business model for mobile data exists and taking the leap to provide consumer centric offerings. The right business model is certainly not an easy thing to build or come across, but it does exist as proven by Telstra. Maybe we need to send some of our folks down-under to do a study …..