Use of 3G mobile broadband on the rise

Posted by Dennis Sellers Mar 12, 2008 at 2:03am

Here’s another reason I think we’ll see 3G services on the iPhone (and the MacBook Air?) before year’s end: iPass, a global provider of enterprise mobility management services, has announced it has enhanced its twice-yearly “Wi-Fi Hotspot Index,” which found that monthly 3G services usage increased steadily throughout the year, growing from an average of 152MB per user in the first quarter of 2007 to 190MB in the fourth quarter.

(But first a brief lesson: 3G is the third generation of mobile phone standards and technology, superseding 2G. 3G technologies enable network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services such as wide-area wireless voice telephony and broadband wireless data. Typically, they provide service at 5-10Mb per second. Now back to our regularly scheduled musing…)

Of those more established users who had been on the service since January 2007, monthly usage averaged 188 MB in the first quarter of 2007 and 225 MB in fourth quarter, indicating that usage seems to rise with experience. At the extreme, a small number of users exceeded 2GB of usage in a given month, according to iPass. These heavy users accounted for less than one half of one percent of all users in the sample and were offset by the 32 percent of businesspeople who used on average less than 50MB in a month.

According to the iPass study, users tended to use their mobile broadband capability regularly. More than 90 percent of established users were active in any given month.

One unexpected finding was that while 3G was the dominant cellular technology, accounting for over 70 percent of all connections, a majority of users had to fall back to slower 2.5G technology. iPass attributes this to the need for indoor use and travel outside of the major metropolitan areas where 3G coverage is concentrated.

Over 2007, 62 percent of users required 2.5G at some point each month. While only three perdent of users relied solely on 2.5G during a given month, iPass believes this low number may reflect some users abandoning mobile data for Wi-Fi hotspots or home broadband when they can’t get a high-speed 3G connection.

“The results of our Mobile Broadband Index suggest that no single technology can meet all the needs of an enterprise workforce, which is why iPass focuses on delivering value by unifying the management of these various access methods,” says Joel Wachtler, vice-president of marketing and strategy at iPass. “While 3G provides broadband download speeds in domestic metropolitan areas, users need Wi-Fi hotspots for fast bi-directional access everywhere else as well as to avoid high international 3G roaming charges. We expect both Wi-Fi hotspots and 3G to continue to grow as enterprises rollout a complete toolkit to their mobile workers.”

Speaking of Wi-Fi, the second half of 2007 saw another strong performance for Wi-Fi, as hotspot usage by business users increased 89 percent over 2006. Based on data gathered from over two million sessions during the period, the Wi-Fi Hotspot Index again demonstrated European growth rapidly outpacing the US, with Europe expanding its worldwide share of hotspot use to 40 percent, up from 31 percent, as America’s representation dropped from 59 percent to 51 percent. Also, London increased its lead as the world capital of Wi-Fi with usage rising by 156 percent over the same time period last year.

The iPass Mobile Broadband Index summarizes internal data collected by iPass and is intended to represent usage behavior across its base of more than 3,000 enterprise customers, including more than 400 of the Forbes Global 2000.

Don’t forget the Macsimum Easter Egg Hunt contest.

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