GPRS shunned by handset manufacturers.
Mobile & Satellite
Handset vendors are stifling
GPRS, says GSM firebrand
By Ray Le Maistre, Total Telecom,
in Montreux
10 October 2000
The roll-out of GPRS services is being held up by the reluctance of the
handset vendors to give enough manufacturing capacity to GPRS
handsets, according to delegates at the GSM Association's 44th
Plenary meeting in Montreux, Switzerland.
"The vendors have known the technical specifications for GPRS for
two years, but they haven't gotten up off their asses and delivered.
They could have done if they had really wanted to," thundered George
Schmitt, now chairman of Herndon, Virginia-based e.spire
Communications, an integrated communications solutions provider,
but previously president of U.S. GSM operator Omnipoint.
"The handset manufacturers have been a great disappointment to us,
including some of those vendors that also make the infrastructure,"
said Schmitt, a former president of the GSM Association and still an
executive committee member. He said the main problem for mobile
operators was that the manufacturers' production facilities are working
at full capacity making handsets to meet current demands for 2G voice
networks, "and we can't force them to produce one product over
another," admitted Schmitt. |
