The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has released information on wireless substitution, based on early data from its most recent National Health Interview Survey.

What is interesting?

Let’s start with the source of the study – a national health study that generates the data from in-person interviews. From June through December 2006, household telephone status information was obtained for 13,056 households in the United States.

Why is CDC concerned about wireless substitution? Because most major survey research organizations, including the National Center for Health Statistics, do not include wireless telephone numbers when conducting telephone surveys.

Let’s look at some of the numbers.

• more than one in eight American homes (12.8%) only had wireless telephones during the second half of 2006;
• 11.6% of all children—8.5 million children—lived in wireless-only households;
• approximately 2.2% of households had neither wireless nor landline service.

It gets especially interesting when you look at demographics within the wireless-only households:

• more than half of all adults (54.0%) living with unrelated roommates, lived in households with only wireless telephones;
• half of all wireless-only adults were less than 30 years of age; a quarter of adults aged 18-24 years were in wireless-only households; nearly 30% of adults aged 25-29 years lived in households with only wireless telephones.
• adults living in poverty were nearly twice as likely (22.4%) as the national average to be living in households with only wireless telephones; non-Hispanic white adults (10.8%) were less likely than Hispanic adults (15.3%) to be wireless-only; adults living in the South (14.0%) were more likely than those in the Northeast (8.6%) to be part of wireless-only households.

The inability to reach households with only wireless telephones may have implications for results from health surveys, political polls, and other research. How will public opinion monitors avoid introducing bias if there are differences between people with and without landline telephones?

Are there comparable statistics for Canada?

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CDC, mobile, substitution

Following the season opener, I commented on the complete convergence found in NBC’s 30Rock, an insider view of TV. I observed how the GE / NBC / Universal empire is monetizing their assets in an emerging video-on-demand and download era. The opening episode was product placement to the extreme with the advertiser (GE) that owns the network (NBC) and a show about a fictional network show, while having the script prominently feature a real appliance made by GE.

Last week, we received confirmation that Jessica Schell, VP Digital Media for NBC Universal will be joining our Business Models in a Converged Environment panel at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit next month. The panel will also feature Doug Scott, Executive Director of Branded Content and Entertainment for Ogilvy North America and Evan Shapiro, EVP & GM for The Independent Film Channel.

It should be an interesting expansion for telecommunications professionals to look into the world of convergence through the eyes of media executives.

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Canadian Telecom Summit, Ogilvy, IFC, NBC, GE, 30Rock

This week, I am helping lead portions of the Executive Development Program being run by the Masters of Engineering in Telecom program at University of Toronto.

The objective of this year’s program is “Providing a Framework to Analyze the Impact of Internet Economics on Content, Applications, Service, and Network Infrastructure Provider Businesses.”

It’s a mouthful, but achievable. We have four and a half days this week with 50 executives attending from the major carriers and manufacturers. Today’s focus is on the state of the industry and looking at some key policy issues. There should be an interesting discussion on net neutrality, with a senior policy VP from one of the major carriers speaking, followed by a presentation from a U of T professor.

I am hoping that we’ll generate some interesting material for me to write about later in the week.

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University of Toronto, MET, net neutrality

I have to admit that I like watching Videotron in action. Robert Depatie has a refreshing enthusiasm that he brought as an outsider – you could say he has a nutty background – Planters Peanuts to be specific.

Each quarter, Videotron continues to post great results.

During the 12-month period ended March 31, 2007, we recorded the highest overall growth rate of all cable companies in Canada, with increases of 63,000 customers for our cable television service, 141,000 customers for illico Digital TV, 146,000 customers for our cable Internet access services, 222,000 customers for cable telephone service, and 20,000 lines for our new wireless telephone service, launched nine months ago

Videotron added 8,000 wireless lines in the past 3 months and that is operating as a reseller in Quebec alone. Contrast those numbers with Bell adding just 13,000 nationwide.

Videotron’s bundles have the effect of growing the market for TV – I have noted before that Quebec traditionally had the lowest penetration of cable services – the bundled offerings thereby improve the capital efficiency of plant in the ground with more customers generating more revenue associated with already deployed cable.

The cable and telecom industry should listen when Videotron speaks at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit next month.

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Videotron, Canadian Telecom Summit