Telecom Trends

Mark Evans wrote last week complaining about what is taking so long for iPhone to come to Canada. Alec Saunders jumps in with his review of an iPhone and he points to a new consultant study that claims iPhone has been worth billions for AT&T.

I am certain that AT&T has no regrets about launching the world's coolest phone and indeed, AT&T's results are what they are in no small measure thanks to iPhone contributing to the bottom line.

But I had a look at the full report and there are a number of questions that I have with its data.

The study starts with an unusual measure of its expected error, using 90% confidence intervals, not the more commonly used 95% - this allows the authors to claim a tighter margin on its estimates, despite only interviewing 460 US based iPhone users. Let's skip by that factoid to get to some more important numbers.

Their study group shows an average monthly bill of $97, up from $78 before iPhone. It is a great ARPU lift, but it seems to be on a base that was already pretty high. According to its most recent results, AT&T's ARPU is around $50, so these are extraordinary customers. The numbers should be examined relative to the iPhone rate plans.

According to the study, a third of their surveyed iPhone users have a second phone. That is also a number that seems high; do a third of the bills include charges for more than one phone.

Also, 13% of the iPhone users said that their phone was unlocked. It seems to me that this means one in 8 of the iPhone users interviewed are on a carrier other than AT&T. So if 1 in 8 respondents is not using AT&T as their carrier, is their phone bill skewing the study results because they are on a non-iPhone kind of plan?

The study raises lots more questions and fodder for lots of discussion.

Our family is planning to get its first iPhone toward the end of the summer when one of my kids heads south for grad school. I'm not planning to pay $97 per month.

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