Mobile Data Adoption in Finland 2005-2006

Internet and mobile telecommunications have been worldwide success stories in the recent decade. While the prospect of combining the services provided by the Internet with seamless mobile access has raised much expectations, mobile Internet or mobile data services have not yet been adopted by the masses in a large scale. Despite the obvious interest on the topic, there has not been much accurate information on the market-wide adoption dynamics of mobile data services. The adoption of mobile data in Finland during 2005-2006 was studied in this research. Data on 80-90% of Finnish mobile subscribers and terminals was collected from mobile operators' charging-orientcd reporting systems in 2005 and 2006. The obtained results show that a major renewal has taken place in the Finnish mobile terminal installed base in 2005-2006 and the total data traffic volume in mobile networks has multiplied. However, the growth does primarily not result from increase in the number of users, whereas average traffic volume per user accounts for most of the growth in traffic volumes. Thus, it seems that the existing mobile data users have acquired more capable terminals and upgraded to relatively cheaper data tariff schemes enabling higher volume data usage. In conclusion, it seems that the critical mass of users necessary for mass market mobile data service adoption has not yet been achieved in Finland.