The Ottawa-based Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association announced on Tuesday that, based on information reported by its members, data growth rates are currently exceeding 50% per quarter.
As Canadians increase their demand for non-voice wireless services – including e-mail, social networking, web browsing, music downloads, mobile television, satellite radio and text, multimedia and instant messaging – the CWTA expects spending to triple to more than $3 billion in the next three years.
According to the report, Canadians continue to be among the world’s top users of wireless voice services – averaging 400 minutes per month – and are also rapidly increasing consumption of wireless data services at both the consumer and enterprise level. We have also been quick to utilize the array of Third Generation, or 3G, products and services available on the country’s national high-speed wireless networks.
Text messaging volumes have doubled in Canada each year since the service was launched in 2002. ‘Canadians are now sending approximately 30 million text messages per day,’ says CWTA president/CEO Peter Barnes. ‘Preliminary numbers for the first nine months of 2007 total almost 7 billion, compared to 4.3 billion in all of 2006.’
