L and other Q fans:
“They will be able to see what is happening in the US, Japan, Korea and elsewhere. They will go to the US and be able to see Americans surfing the web in the airports and in restuarants and offices. They won't be able to do it because they will be roaming on domestic US GSM networks at 9.6Kbps.”
Yeah, right, sure, and the pigs will fly and the Russians invented radio and …
Me thinks however that the 3G problems may well get worse and that has nothing to do with the subtle details of the underlying technologies the way they are discussed by the Q cheerleaders here or in the propaganda war being fought by Ollilla, Hellstrom and Jacobs et al. (BTW: Why can’t those guys keep the eye on the ball and build the market together in stead of shooting themselves in the foot?) 3G in any flavor will never give us the same surfing experience either in speed or value for money that we will have at home or in the office. An always-on connection for universal messaging, w3 access and location-dependent services would be compelling for many of us but compare the number of laptops and PDAs in use worldwide to the number of phones and you will get a quantitative measure of early demand. What is the delta benefit for the early 3G customer against the delta cost of the 3G phone, cost per minute, coverage area, roaming area and battery life compared to my basic recent 2G phone and service? Why should the average customer upgrade any time soon. Can we really expect an explosive growth in the early years? What density of base stations is needed to give even a medium date rate and what would operators need to charge per MB transferred to stand a chance to give their investors a decent return on the money?
We may well be witnessing another case of disruptive technologies that is beginning to unfold here. You can establish islands of very high speed mobility in the places where people really do sit down and work while on the road, in the airport lounges and restaurants that you mention, at Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, hotels, convention centers, shopping malls, office buildings and at home. This can be done with low cost of entry, without the formidable dedicated network infrastructure that a wide-area cellular installation requires. Link those islands of inexpensive WLAN technology up to the backbone with whatever IP conduit you find locally, ADSL, cable WLL or FTTH/FTTC and you have cheap surfing at Ethernet speed in those places where you need it. The net-heads beat the bell-heads again. 3G is left to provide slower-rate IP mobility to less densely populated areas in the same way that G* and I* provide super service to the Eskimos and climbers on Mt Everest.
thestandard.com
homerun.telia.com (click the little British flag for English version)
Message 15393787
I always thought that the strength of GSM was that it was a standard that enabled competition among operators, among infrastructure suppliers and phone manufacturers and that it was built on a great well thought through network and service platform. That mix is a very compelling proposition for a sophisticated operator. It gave the Euros and Asians a great mobile service with seamless roaming that was years ahead of the patchwork we suffered in the US throughout the 90s (and we still suffer). GSM was never the ultimate best technology, nor will CDMA in any form be the eternal and Holy Grail any more than smoke signalling, semaphores or spark transmitters were at their time.
That GSM advantage will not last forever though. What is next, 3G or my disruptive scenario or both? Give 3G 5-6 years and it may well become a success. It will not kill my disruptive scenario but it might still survive for true wide-area roaming. To achieve that, a wide-area standard is again more important than the subtleties of the technology, be it ODFM, CDMA2000, W-CDMA or whatever. Maybe that’s why operators also in Korea, Japan and US seem to be going the W-CDMA route. Not because they don’t like you guys or don’t love Dr Jacobs, but because they now understand why GSM became such a stunning success.
Just my very humble opinion …
PS
Keep cheerleading and spreading FUD – although some of the blind and fanatical nonsense and zeal on the Q threads frequently gets my blood pressure up there is still a high entertainment value, it’s great fun to watch. And they are great guys the Q team, Dr J has to be one of the best tech CEOs around, super tech wiz able to move technology to the market, a great salesperson, great strategist and skilful in mobilizing the government machinery to fight his wars. I just wish he had thought before he spoke to FT this Friday morning …
-ygg
lowsignaltonoisesurroundedbysmokeandmirrors@broadbandnoise.com |
