Hey, it's not only spam that wireless carriers have to worry about. According to a 1,200-person survey done by Bear Stearns, it's apparently going to be far less lucrative to pursue new wireless customers in the U.S. The investment firm said new customers will only spend $30 a month, making it difficult to make much of a profit from them. Given this bleak view on wireless economics, it may mean carriers will take more interest in pre-paid services and MVNO relationships.
The Bear Stearns survey is the second less-than-positive take on a fast-emergingconsumer technology. Earlier this year, J.P. Morgan conducted a survey that suggested only 35% people had an interest in subscribing to satellite radio. J.P. Morgan also discovered that 62% of people interested in satellite radio would want it for commercial-free music, rather than sports or personalities such as Howard Stern, who signed a US$100-milion with Sirius.

If spam on your personal computer wasn't enough of a hassle, Wireless Services said 43% of all text messages sent on U.S. networks last year were spam, compared with 18% in 2003. The wireless messaging company said it arrived at its figures based on the 1.2 billion spam messages it blocked last year.
If Wireless Services' information is accurate, it could pose a huge issue for carriers that are heavily relying on more data traffic to boost ARPU. Can you imagine the kickback from consumers who incur extra charges due to a flood of spam messages into their e-mail boxes? The carriers are going to have act quickly and decisively to ensure wireless spam hasn't got out of hand - assuming it's not there already, of course! That said, there must be some pretty happy anti-spam software makers looking at another fertile market for growth.

BusinessWeek has jumped into will-they-or-won't-they arena when it comes to an IPO by Vonage, which has raised more than US$200 million in venture capital. According to the magazine, several VCs believe Vonage will go public this year but investors could be spooked by Vonage's less than stellar retention rate. In a recent posting, Om Malik wrote that Vonage is adding 10,000 new subscribers a week, and it has surpassed 450,000 customers. The company has made it clear its subscriber target for this year is 800,000 to 1M.
For those you who read this blog, I'm in the camp that Vonage could do an IPO that would give a market capitalization of more than US$2-billion based on how publicly-traded rival 8X8 Inc. is currently valued. As someone who reported on the dot-com boom and wrote far too many stories about twenty-something billionaires, I'm as cautious as the next guy when it comes to touting IPOs of emerging technology companies. That said, Vonage has subscriber momentum and investors like nothing better than a sexy story involving a business they can sort of understand. Before anyone gets too carried away, it should be noted that Vonage may be bleeding badly given how much it's spending on marketing to attract subscribers, and competition will intensify in a big way when the carriers and cablecos get really serious about Internet telephony.