Popularity of Telehealth. The Health Industry Distributors Association conducted a follow-up survey of people who had met with a doctor via a broadband connection instead of a live office visit. The survey found that a majority of people were very satisfied with the telehealth visit and 54% said that they thought the experience was better than a live office visit.
Interestingly over half of the telehealth users were under 50 and they preferred telehealth because of the convenience. Many said that once they found their doctor would allow telehealth visits that they requested them whenever possible. Of course, many telehealth users live in rural areas where it can be a long drive to make a routine doctor office visit. The doctors involved in telehealth also like it for routine office visits. They do complain, however, that not enough insurance companies have caught up with the concept and that they often encounter reimbursement problems.
Explosion of Mobile Data Usage. Ericsson, the company that supplies a lot of electronics for the cellular industry, has warned cellular companies to prepare for an explosive growth in cellular data traffic over the next five years. They warn that within five years that the average cellphone user will grow from the average of today’s monthly usage of 5 gigabytes to a monthly usage of 26 gigabytes. They say the usage will be up to 6.9 gigabytes just by the end of this year – a 40% growth over last year.
They say that several factors will contribute to the strong growth. Obviously video usage drives a lot of the usage, but there is also huge annual growth from social media usage as those platforms incorporate more video. They also predict that by 2022, as we start to meld 5G cellular into the network, that users will feel more comfortable using data on their cellphones.
New Satellite Broadband. ViaSat just launched a new satellite that will allow for data speeds up to 200 Mbps. The satellite was recently launched and that has a throughput of 300 gigabits per second. The satellite is expected to be placed into service in early 2018 and will boost the company’s Excede broadband product.
The new satellite, dubbed ViaSat 2, will originally augment and eventually replace the company’s current ViaSat 1 satellite. The company currently serves 659,000 customers from the ViaSat 1 satellite plus a few it purchased from WildBlue in 2009. The new satellite will allow an expansion of the customer base.
The company expects that the majority of customers will continue to buy data products with speeds up to 25 Mbps, like those already offered by Excede. This tells me that the faster speeds, while available, are going to be expensive. This satellite will still be in a high earth orbit, which means the continued high latency that makes satellite service incompatible with any real-time applications. And there is no word if the larger capacity will allow the company to raise the stingy data caps that customers seem to universally hate.
Growth of Music Streaming. Nielsen released statistics that show that streaming audio is growing at an explosive rate and seems to have crossed the threshold to become the primary way that most people listen to music. Audio streams in 2017 are 62% higher than just a year ago. The industry has grown from an annual number of 113.5 billion steams to 184 billion in just one year.
Nielsen estimates that total listens to music from all media including albums and music downloads will be 235 billion this year, meaning that streaming video now accounts for 78% of all music listened to.
And this growth has made for some eye-popping numbers. For example, Drake’s release of More Life in March saw 385 million streams in the week after release. Those kinds of numbers swamp the number of people that would listen to a new artist under older media.