uptake

This page highlights figures about the uptake of communication technologies and services, supplementing the Communications Revolution profile and the Metrics & Statistics guide.

It covers -

• introduction
• time to reach US audience of 50 million
• time to reach 70% of households
• Australian telecoms traffic
• data versus voice
• selected internet statistics
• money

     introduction

[under development]

     time to reach US audience of 50 million

AM radio - 38 years

television - 13 years

web - 4 years

     time to reach 70% of households

Another measure is provided by the time taken to reach a specific number of households. Figures published by the US Census Bureau for example suggest that the 70% mark was reached -

electricity - 49 years

telephone - 63 years

mobile phone - 20 years

AM radio - 15 years

FM radio - 5 years

B&W television - 10 years

colour television - 20 years

cable television - 37 years

VCR - 10 years

answering machine - 12 years

microwave oven - 30 years

mobile phone - 13 years

web - 7 years

As of 1955 some 95% of US households are claimed as owning an electric refrigerator, with the UK supposedly reaching the 75% mark as late as 1980.

A perspective on Australian and overseas uptake of particular media and non-ICT devices is provided in figures on the following page of this Note.

In summary, time taken to reach 70% of Australian households is

VCR - 17 years

microwave ovens - 26 years

CD player - 19 years

     Australian telecoms traffic

[under development]

     data v voice

global telecommunication traffic generated by data transmission exceeds traffic generated by voice transmission in 2001 (up from 15-25% in 1997)

     selected internet stats

The size & shape page of our metrics guide points to various internet statistics, from which we've extracted -

number of registered domains (June 00) - 17.75 million, 100% growth pa

number of hosts (January 00) - 88 million

number of secure servers (May 00) - 74 thousand, 100% growth pa

time to register first million domain names - four years

time to move from 4 to 5 million names - three months

     money

One perspective on uptake of communication technologies is provided by statistics about spending on hardware and advertising.

Susan Douglas' Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1987) for example notes US growth in the sale of radio equipment - from US$60 million in 1922 to US$843 million in 1929.

Year - US$m sales
1922 - 60
1923 - 136
1924 - 358
1925 - 430
1926 - 506
1927 - 426
1928 - 651
1929 - 843

 

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