Raw Data
US Pager Market
Falling prices are bringing pagers to the masses. The unfortunate side effect, at least for the pager industry, is a precipitous drop in gross margins. But the industry hopes that service charges for new features, such as acknowledgment paging and data delivery, will push margins back up.
Overseas Telephone Capacity
Thanks in part to increasingly effective multiplexing and compression schemes, we've seen a glut of transpacific and transatlantic communications capacity. But this may change because of new applications - like direct video - requiring large bandwidth and low latency.
PC Consumption
The United States remains the largest market for PCs. But the greatest growth has been in Asia, and, at least during 1992 and 1993, in Latin America and Eastern Europe. But those latter regions ("rest of world") slowed last year because of political and economic instability.
Installed ISDN Circuits
Basic-rate ISDN service, offering 128-Kbps digital lines to the home or office, is finally gaining acceptance. Germany leads in installed circuits, thanks to aggressive pricing. Eyes are now turning to primary-rate service, which offers a blinding 1,500 Kbps but costs up to US$1,000 a month.
Steve G. Steinberg
