Internet growth: it’s only just started !
IT Support
For many of us now, life and work without the Internet is unthinkable (even your author can remember when secretaries typed letters using carbon paper and all phones had wires). But according to research from US analyst Telegeography, it’s about to expand way beyond current usage.
They say that by the end of 2009, here were 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide, up 18% in the year. Web sites are growing faster: 47 new web sites were added in 2009, making the total now 234 million. In terms of users, the Asian continent dominates with 738m connected individuals, compared with 418m Europeans and 253m North Americans.
But Telegeography predicted that by 2013 use of internet-capable 3G and 4G cellular devices will have exploded, to over 4.5 billion devices – more than doubling the number of current Internet users in only 4 years. Most of the growth will come in developing countries, which leapfrog traditional Internet connectivity methods (eg broadband) and access using mobile phone networks.
Fotec Advice: The message is clear: if you aren’t accessing the net and your own IT systems from your smartphone already, you will be soon: the benefits of being able to respond to email on the move are obvious. But the downsides are equally strong: the costs and confusion of adding new, disconnected technologies, the increasing integration and support problems for your IT team. And for what ? So your road warriors can follow the football real time ? So everyone can update their friends’ Facebook walls ?
Fotec recommends strongly that mobile access is implemented as a formal project on your IT Road Map: planned and justified properly, implemented securely, and supported as professionally as all the other technology you use to drive your business.
Fotec have wide experience implementing mobile communications as part of a proper IT Road Map. For more details, just call 0845 601 6480 or just click here.