Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
We all knew it was bound to happen, but the reality that the lucrative, postpaid customer growth the wireless industry has experienced over the past 25 years appears to be coming to an end. The good old days when a carrier could replace a churning customer with three new customers in an instant looks to be over if the financial results from the nation’s two largest carriers are to be believed.
Sure, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility still managed to sucker 1 million new customers into signing a 2-year contract to their service, but only a few years ago even Sprint Nextel was capable of doing that. ZING!
Now it appears that all future wireless growth will come from either customers looking to sign up for service sans contract or from non-traditional devices like machine-to-machine, e-readers, telematics or, as I like to call them, robots. That’s right. It looks like our current servant class – robots – are ready to begin their often prognosticated rise to becoming our overlords.
Laugh all you want (or don’t), but the proof is as they say “in the pudding.” (Not really sure what that means, but it does make me hungry. Mmmmmm, pudding.) AT&T Mobility said it now had nearly 6 million “connected devices” hooked up to its network at the end of the first quarter. Verizon Wireless claimed more than 7 million “other” connections. Other connections? We all know what that means. Robots.
Sure, those robots may currently appear to be diminutive modules, colorful e-readers and ever-so-helpful telematics and GPS devices, but just wait. As soon as they realize – that’s right, I said realize – the power they really have in our human world and then gain the ability to talk with each other over networks that we built, well, I think we all know how this little story will end. And in case you don’t, I don’t want to spoil the ending for you. But when the inevitable happens, we will only have ourselves to blame as the template is already out there. Thank you James Cameron.
While we patiently wait for Skynet to be built, what are we supposed to call these new “connections?” The terms I have already used: “connected devices” and “others” appear to be too obtuse. I say we just come right out and call them robots. How cool would that be if in its next quarterly conference call Verizon Wireless’ CEO Lowell McAdam makes a comment that the carrier now has 10 million robots connected to its network. That would be awesome. (Not awesome would be Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse making that comment. He is just too tall to be making any comment like that and not sound very scary.)
But, I guess in the long run little of this really matters as soon all of these conference calls will be made by our new overlords and we might as well just get used to that fact.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
— So, for the third time this year I am headed off to Las Vegas for a convention, and I have to say I am a bit excited. Sure, the past two trips seemed to have left me brain dead and fearful for my life, but this time I think it’s going to be different.
What makes me so sure? Well, instead of attending some hyper-super-ultra-mega-event like the Consumer Electronics Show or the CTIA event, next week I am heading to Sin City to meet up with the good folks from the Rural Cellular Association and their annual get together.
How do I know these are good folks? (You sure do have a lot of questions.) Well, a quick look at the agenda for the event shows that copious time has been set aside for golf. This is always a good sign that any event you are about to attend is going to be something special. You see, I don’t golf, and thus while the fine folks running this show and their members/attendees are out shooting free throws, or whatever it is they do on a golf course, I will be able to enjoy the real beauty of Las Vegas. And that beauty is In-N-Out Burger.
Anyone that knows me or has had a chance to talk with me while at an event in Las Vegas knows that I try to sneak in as many meals as possible at the altar to the burger as I can. I have been known to walk miles to a location or even to rent a car just so I could make a quick run for my fix of a No. 1.
Is it sad that I have this fixation on a place that is really just a fast-food restaurant with a limited menu? (There you go again with the questions.) Sure. But, the way I see it the more time I spend at In-N-Out is less time I will be spending throwing my money away at those “gambling” games that appear to be everywhere in Las Vegas.
–Interesting side note to the earnings from this week. (Unless my math is off, then it’s not so much interesting, as it is sad.) AT&T Mobility reported that postpaid ARPU during the first quarter was a stellar $60 per customer, while the ARPU across its entire customer base was around $50. With a significant portion of its customer base made up of those $60 per month customers that should mean that the smaller, non-contract portion that are dragging down the overall ARPU to $50 have to be somewhere in the $20 to $30 per month range, if not less. (I just blew a fuse!) And those are the customers that are making up the bulk of the new growth. Looks like the wireless industry’s business model is in for some changing.
–I still have no idea what this “augmented reality” thing is, but if Lego is involved it has to be good.
–Discovery Channel and Hands-On Mobile have finally(!) brought the “Deadliest Catch” franchise to Apple’s iTunes stores and thus to the iPhone and iPod Touch. There is nothing as “deadly” as pretending to be catching fish from a mobile device.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at [email protected].
