Bob's Byte: No Problems in Public Please
By Bob Emmerson, Nov 13 2000
Right now the industry seems to be whistling in the dark.
Operators shrug off the high cost of 3G and lengthy
payback times. Kit vendors ignore their failure to deliver
high-speed data. WAP is a failure in the eyes of the
market.
(2 recommendations)
Isn't it time for some honest debate? It
clearly is, which is why I trotted off to an
open forum that would "discuss the fate
of third generation wireless technology
with a panel of leading lights from the
mobile world."
It was a nice story for a while. Smooth
migration from CSD (circuit-switched
data) at 9.6 Kbps onwards and upwards
to HSCSD (high-speed CSD) services
running at over 40Kbps. Then came the biggie: packet
switching at 115K, going up to almost 400K later on,
and then a whopping 2M when standing still in an
urban environment. I've sat through a dozen or more
presentations that mapped out this future and went on
to predict a wireless, multimedia nirvana. Question is,
was the industry lying or did it believe its own hype?
HSCSD failed because it wasn't high speed and the
market wanted packet-, not circuit-switched data. GPRS
is up and running but forget 115K; the first services are
in the 10 to 20K region and will probably max out at
50K. And you can also wave goodbye to 3G's top rate,
even on a sunny day with the wind in the right
direction. A knowledgeable contributor to
TotalTelecom's 4G forum has pointed out that: "The
problem with 3G is that when you actually read the
specs (e.g. Tdoc SMG2 435/97), the data rates talked
about are nowhere near the 2Mbps sometimes spoken
of, but are nearer 144Kbps maximum. Even that may be
more than can really be delivered."
Not good news and they come on top of the very valid
concerns about the financial viability of 3G. Press
releases are starting to circulate about services running
towards the end of 2001, but the investment bank
Dresdner Kleinwort Benson expects services to become
widely available in 2004 or 2005. And the dates for
breaking even are way out. Data from the UMTS Forum
indicates a date of 2007 when there is a minimal license
fee. Operators who have paid around $50 per
subscriber for the licence won't break even until 2009
and nobody can see that far ahead.
So, there was clearly a lot to discuss and I was looking
forward to a lively debate. What we got from the six
'leading lights from the mobile world' was a series of
bland statements. For example: GSM was the leading
standard. Whow! The number of subscribers continues
to increase. Amazing! SMS traffic continues to rise!
Incredible. GPRS is an 'always on' service that enables
seamless roaming. Whatever next!
I don't recall anybody on the panel mentioning 3G,
much less its fate, and none of the statements involved
a real issue.
The audience was composed of analysts, editors and
journalists and by the time the moderator asked for
questions from the floor they were decidedly restless.
There were lots of questions that I wanted to ask, but
after waiting almost an hour and hearing nothing but
platitudes I went for the jugular. Why, I asked, should
we believe anything the industry tells us in future since
they have not told the truth in the past?
The moderator looked left and right and asked who
wanted to take that question and nobody did. There
was an embarrassed silence, it was then passed to a
company that markets network equipment and the
spokesperson offered to discuss it with me "off line."
Recall that this was meant to be an open forum and
you can imagine the response from myself and other
members of the audience.
Unanswered questions
I'd wanted to discuss the kind of applications that didn't
need high speed. Mobile e-mail, for example, and the
emerging market for unified messaging. That would
have been the logical way for the panel to address one
of the issues.
Were network operators going to employ wireless LAN
technology in business environments like airport
lounges? It's a logical move given the need to generate
data revenues. That would indicate that operators have
finally recognised the importance of the business
market. Professional mobile warriors are the early
adopters - the subscribers who are prepared to pay for
decent data services.
How viable is the idea of shared infrastructures, i.e. the
concept of managed cell-site co-location being
proposed by Crown Castle International? This looks like
a good way of reducing the cost of network build out.
That would seem to be one way of getting round those
huge infrastructure costs.
I didn't ask any of these issue-related questions
because I had a train to catch. Moreover, there didn't
seem to be much point since the panel were not
prepared to talk about problems in public.
Bob's Byte is a regular column on TheFeature. Bob
Emmerson observes and writes on the wireless industry
from his home in The Netherlands.
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