Many People Ready To Go Mobile Only, Maybe

Studies

from the can-you-hear-me-here? dept

LetsTalk (who is hardly an unbiased party) has come out with a study showing that, if coverage were a little better and prices were a little lower, a large percentage of people would be willing to ditch their landlines for mobile phones. Basically, what they’re saying is “if my mobile phone works as well as my home phone, sure I’d ditch my landline.” This isn’t all that surprising, though, the folks behind the study obviously want to make it seem like it’s big news. The more interesting aspect of the study may be the footnote in the article claiming that not too many people are interested in wireless broadband. The study found that only 8% said they wanted wireless broadband, which is probably meaningless. It’s a situation where they’re first talking to people about their mobile phones, and then switching gears and asking about wireless broadband. Many people, in that context, will respond negatively — thinking that they don’t need broadband on their mobile phone. However, the power of wireless broadband has very little to do with mobile phones. It’s also a technology that most people have little experience with, and those are the types of technologies where asking people if they want them beforehand will give you a very different response than if you actually offer the technology and see how people use it. In the end, what will drive wireless broadband usage isn’t “wireless broadband,” but the applications that make wireless broadband valuable. This study didn’t ask about that.