m.Net Blog

Posted by Horden Wiltshire, Chief Executive Officer

I spoke recently at the latest in the Mobile Mondays series of events hosted by South Australia’s Mobile Entertainment Growth Alliance (mEga|SA) and the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA).

I spoke in an informal setting to the attendees regarding the tipping point for off-deck mobile services – those mobile services that you don’t get through your carrier’s portal. The meeting was well-supported and it’s good to see that the Adelaide mobile scene is alive and well.

The basis of the presentation was discussion of the factors that I think are required to get to the tipping point for the use of off-deck services… to get to the point where these services become ubiquitous. The factors in my opinion are:

• Data Pricing
• Carrier Access
• User Behaviour
• Uptake of 3G

Marisa Maio Mackay will provide some updates in future blog entries regarding consumer behaviour and Scott Johnson posted recently about the uptake of 3G in Australia. Scott estimates the penetration in Australia at around 22% and Marisa’s research with the AIMIA Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index revealed that 30% of respondents had a 3G phone. (The discrepancy can be explained by the fact that some people have more than one phone).

I think one of the most important trends is the move towards capped data plans. If you look at the casual rates for data roaming on your phone with Australia’s two largest carriers, Telstra and Optus, users are still paying more than $15 per megabyte. However, if you look at the top plans for each of the carriers the price comes down quite dramatically.

• Vodafone: $2.99 per MB ($15 plan)
• Telstra: $0.41 per MB ($29 plan)
• Optus: $0.29 per MB ($30 plan)
• Hutchison: $0.02 per MB ($40 plan)

But what does 1MB on your phone get you? Here is a summary of some of m.Net’s client WAP sites and their sizes:

So 1 MB of data will get you 250 m.Net pages, 60 Nokia pages and 40 Home and Away pages. When you are paying 2c per MB that’s pretty close to free for each page! When all the carriers are at that price point we will indeed have reached the tipping point as far as data pricing is concerned.