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uptake and persistence
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
[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
persistence
The US 2005 Electronic Substitution for Mail: Models
and Results, Myth and Reality study (PDF)
questions forecasts about the imminent death of the public
mail system, noting that volumes have increased rather
than shrunk in tandem with uptake of electronic messaging.
Much of that increase, of course, relates to printed junk
mail.
next page (devices)
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