Today's Quiz Question: Are there more SIMs than people in the world? There are now more SIMs than people in the world, with the former surpassing the latter a little earlier this year, or so says mobile network supplier Ericsson, with that particular factoid – and many others – found in its annual Christmas Pudding of traffic stats and forecasts, the 2015 Mobility Report. Ericsson takes a …
It's not exactly surprising given how many things now have a mobile net connection. It's more than just things like phones and laptops/tablets as many cars have one with the various homelink, uconnect, onstar, etc. services. I'm sure there are also lots of other connected devices as well and equally sure the number is growing every day with the whole IoT thing.
It's not that simple. In Australia, and not all that long ago (barely a few years), all carriers swore black and blue there were no plans to extinguish 2G. Today, Telstra has had the 2G writing on the wall for some time. Optus has reported 2G's immenent doom as well. Voda (Hutchison) is in the thinking about it stage.
Telstra quotes less than 1% of their userbase on 2G, and claims they'll be assisting those subscribers to move over. So it's disuse that's causing the turnoff.
Stiff shit you say, it's simple you say, stop whining and upgrade your thousand year old phone you crybaby, you say. Too bad it's not that simple.
the bulk of the non-phone comms gear (trackers, alarm comms terminals and such) all come from Europe where 2G is plentiful, heck it grows wild in the fields. But here, it's a dying breed.
You can't "just" replace an embedded 2G comms module in an Alarm panel. You can't "just" replace trackers, you have to replace your entire gear with "modern" 3G gear that is nowhere near as plentiful as 2G. Oh, and it costs 10 times more, because 2G gear is plentiful, and 3G is not. And it doesn't help that this is Australia, remember?
It's "just" not that simple.
Amen to that - have a look on the PCI web site at the number of EFT terminals that have '2G' backhaul and compare it to those that have '3G'. I'm not willing to take a guess as to how many 2G devices need to be replaced in Australia over the next 18 months, but it could be millions.
Yes, I'm working on replacing a 'small' number of these in vending machines (~200) and it's quite a big job!
Indeed, we're scrambling around to get a suitable 3G solution in place for our Australian business, but as you say it's a bit of a pain given that we're so wedded to 2G over this side of the globe and all of our existing kit is firmly 2G-based. Add to that the rather low likelihood of European 3G kit already having approval for use in Australia and the fun that can then be had getting it approved, and it's all a bit of a spheroid-based pain just below the midsection.
And as if that wasn't enough, they go and start the NBN rollout at the same time, meaning all our landline stuff needs to be re-evaluated/tweaked as well...
So no, simple it most assuredly isn't, not in the world of embedded telecoms gear.
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