Despite arriving to commentary and first impressions along the lines of "they've finally caught up", "why didn't they do that?" and "we predicted every single thing about this phone before the announcement" the new iPhone is likely to be the most revolutionary iDevice since the iPad. At least in Australia.

If Apple launched a brick, literally, it would most likely sell like hot cakes. If that brick had 4G built in it would be revolutionary in Australia. What we have here is an iPhone that literally millions of existing iPhone users will want to upgrade to as soon as possible - eBay announced yesterday that some 400,000 iPhone 4's and 4S's had hit the auction site lately - and that means 4G will become pretty-much normal overnight. This has enormous consequences for Australia.

Massive speed improvements mean more data consumption which means many people will change how they interact with the internet and what functions will be performed while mobile. It also means that infrastructure will have to upgrade significantly to cope with the traffic and that business models will change to further reflect data traffic rather than voice calls. While 4G phones have been around for a while, none have set the world alight and remain in the realm of early adopters. Now 4G is about to go mainstream in a very big way and that can only affect the way we deal with internet access and services, especially for mobile.

It's arguable that the 4G iPhone has already had an effect. It's unlikely to be a coincidence that Optus has only just sorted out its 4G network coverage. If it hadn't been ready before the launch then oh-so-many of those iPhone users would go straight to Telstra.

Stats

Earlier this year, top Cisco Analyst, Dr Robert Pepper described the astronomical growth in wireless data consumption and showed how growth curves suggested the airwaves could start getting congested by just 2016 without major wired and wireless infrastructure upgrades. That's largely down to statistics which showed how in the first year of American 4G network usage, users consumed a staggering 28x more data than individual 3G users. However, he also said "Every year we make these projections and every year Apple launches something which blows them out of the water."

In 2011 less than one per cent of Australian mobile users used 1GB of data per month. By 2016, 59 per cent of Australian mobile users (11.8 million people) will be generating that much traffic (those projections were made pre-iPhone 5 announcement). Pepper described the telco reaction to that as "sobering". The tsunami of data heading towards the Australian networks is going to be astonishingly high, especially considering all the new owners will initially be wanting to test the new speeds out. There are some 3 million iPhone users in Australia today. It's fully conceivable that over a million will be using 4G by the end of the year.

It's an enormous amount of traffic for a network to handle and Telstra and Optus will be having to rapidly increase capacity just to cope with this one launch. Otherwise their networks will be congested and slow.

Telstra has said that it hasn't seen the 28x data increase of the US played out in Australia yet. However, the US 4G networks were more mature and less patchy than our early networks and there's a better choice of 4G phones. But when Telstra's 4G launched we saw staggering speeds of around 50Mb/s download and 30Mb/s upload. A year on you're now more likely to get 10Mb/s each way. What will we get this time next week when the new iPhones start coming to life?

Sink or swim?

But while Telstra, Optus and Virgin (who use Optus' network) might be waiting in stunned awe of the approach of the monster wave that they need to surf, one almost feels sorry for Vodafone. The company which was already floundering, has no 4G network and subsequently no surf board. Losing out on an iPhone launch by not supporting a headline feature has got to hurt it and you can expect more customers to leave. If that happens, however, it could just be that those who are left will benefit from a less-congested service.

Offloading

It will be interesting to see what kind of bump a 4G iPhone makes on traffic projections. What it's more likely to do is accelerate the move to "Offloading." This is where telcos start using WiFi hotspots to seamlessly transfer phone data off their mobile networks and onto the nearby wired networks as often as possible. This already happens in the US and UK but, up to now, our 3G networks have impressively handled traffic without needing to do that. Nonetheless, we can expect to see land grabs at places like Westfield centres and stadiums by telcos wanting people to transmit their data requests over WiFi instead of cluttering up the 4G network. Doing this could even be Vodafone's salvation.

Near Field Communications

One of the big disappointments of the new iPhone was the lack of a Near Field Communications chip. This gives a phone the ability to interact with things just by waving it near a receiver. We've seen it used on gimmicky things thus far with probably the best example being the ability to easily order some food if you're in a Gold Class cinema - hardly world changing. The huge potential for NFC has been for Pay Wave-like payments using your phone. Indeed, phones provide a more secure way of paying than swiping a credit card because you'd have to temporarily activate the chip before use - using a PIN or similar.

However, this has been present in phones for a year without the payment option being available. NFC chips have two elements - the communicating bit and a secure element which allows for transactions. Samsung has been a leader in this NFC field and told us that the delay in payment technology has been due to little interest from banks. However, a leading bank told us "That's Bullshit!" and that the only reason for there being no transactions on phones yet is because Samsung won't release the codes.

At present you can pay using your phone - if you have an iPhone with a special case and a CommBank account. Thus far the system has proved popular with customers but has seen vendors - especially cab drivers apparently - being very suspicious and wary that they might be being scammed.

Either way, it looks like the iPhone can afford to wait to have an NFC chip - and do it right when the market is ready. That should be soon which means a new iPhone 5S could be released and supporting it early next year (you heard it here first). When it does happen, regardless of the phone itself, that too will be revolutionary.

Minor changes

On a more minor note, the new, small Lightning connector is unlikely to prove too revolutionary, but considering the enormous market for iAccessories it's likely that Christmas will be a particularly rich time for upgrading those speaker docks. Adding a Panorama feature to the camera might have some knock on effects, however. At present Samsung and HTC offer superb capabilities for creating Ken Duncan-like panorama shots where several photos are seamlessly stitched together. If the Apple hordes start doing this we could see changes in how pictures are displayed and distributed on the likes of Facebook and Instagram. It could create a demand for new printed products too.

Overall

Regardless of the iPhone 5's features - all of which we've seen on Android for over a year now - the phone could still be the one to buy if the battery can remain useable in a 4G world. Up to now, the few 4G phones on the market - mostly from HTC - have been generally good but suffered from seriously iffy battery life. For example, the HTC One XL is a great phone but it can be dead by 5pm after modest use. None have been flat out recommended as 'must buy' by the tech media yet. The 4G version of the Samsung Galaxy S III is set to go on sale the day before the iPhone 5. Unless there's an upgrade in battery I'd be wary of rushing out and buying that straight away as it could be poor. If the iPhone can nail this BIG problem it could still be the phone to buy - making it even more popular and exacerbating network demand further. Most importantly it will mean that more of society will adjust to accessing large amounts of data, quickly while on the move.