WI AT&T President speaks on telecom trends at WIN Milwaukee

Posted by Robert Merrill on October 8, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

Today’s speaker at WIN Milwaukee was Scott T. VanderSanden, president of AT&T Wisconsin, on the topic of “Telecom Innovation and Economic Growth.” He pointed out some things that I kind-of knew but hadn’t really thought about, and also told me some surprising things that I had never heard.

• The number of land-line subscribers peaked in 2002 or 2003 (it was hard to read the graph) and is now declining, in real terms, even as the US population continues to grow.
• The number of wireless subscribers passed the number of landline subscribers in 2004 and has never looked back.
• There are now over 250 million wireless subscribers in the US. If it seems like everybody has a cell phone, it’s apparently because nearly everybody has a cell phone.
• Smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry, and their ilk) are now the majority choice of people starting new wireless contracts.
• The future of the Internet is wireless, and the big switch will happen in 3-5 years. Verizon sold all their landlines in Wisconsin.
• Traffic-limited Internet plans are on the horizon, but 90% of the users won’t be affected because the remaining 10% generates 90% of the network traffic. Traffic-limited plans will result in lower monthly Internet fees for most smartphone users, and once people get used to go-anywhere Internet on their new smartphone, they’ll want it on their netbook and laptop too.
• There’s still a lot of dark fiber, but it also takes an awful lot of fiber to connect all of those wireless towers.