TORONTO – We Canadians just can’t get enough of our mobile devices and all they do for us, said Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association president and CEO Bernard Lord.
Lord (pictured below) gave the day one luncheon keynote at the Canadian Telecom Summit at the Toronto Congress Centre and since his speech laid down a long list of some pretty serious numbers from research done by Quorus Consulting, to go along with the ones CWTA commissioned from Ovum Group which we detail in another story, we thought we’d reproduce our top-ten right here, for those who missed them:
1. Canadians send about 10 million texts per hour.
2. Half of all 9-1-1 calls are made from mobile phones.
3. Half of all mobile users in Canada now own smartphones. And in the 18 to 34 year-old category, that number jumps to almost 70%.
4. The most frequently downloaded apps are weather related (84%) followed by social networks, instant messaging and blogs.
5. Twenty-eight percent of smartphone banking or pay for products with their device, rising to 38% for users 18 to 34. In cellphone-only households, 47%.
6. By 2014, there will be over 30 million wireless subscriptions in Canada. 26 million Canadians have mobile devices now.
7. The networks of Canadian wireless carriers cover 99% of the Canadian population.
8. There are 13,000 wireless antenna sites in Canada. In the U.K. (which is one-fifth the size but has about twice the population) there are 52,000 sites. So yes, there are holes in the Canadian network, by comparison and consumers need to be reassured the needed new cell towers won’t make them ill.
9. A smartphone uses the capacity of as many as 35 “regular” mobile phones, and a tablet uses the capacity of as many as 121 regular mobile phones.
10. Some CWTA member company networks are experiencing data growth of 5% per week.
– Greg O`Brien
Photo by Pinpoint National Photography
