AWSJ: 3G's Promise May Be Unmet, But Enjoy "Hang On Sloopy"
By JEREMY WAGSTAFF
Staff Reporter
June 3, 2001
Dow Jones Newswires
You can tell when a new technology has found a place in your heart when you get excited about downloading a new ring tone called "Hang On Sloopy." Wheeeee.
A year ago we were told our mobile telephones would soon be the nerve center of a brave new world allowing us to send and receive data, e-mail, and videos, access the Internet, and order Chinese food from China. Nowadays, if some executive stands up and makes those claims, he is likely to be hunted down and shot.
Blame for this state of affairs is evenly spread among fallout from the dot-com collapse, marketing hype, technical problems with the third generation of mobile technology, called 3G, and consumer skepticism. (Personally I blame the stupid acronyms and initials the industry seems determined to give all these new technologies, the worst being WAP, but I'm in a minority.)
In the meantime, expectations have fallen to the point where what would have sounded like a hopeless lack of vision last year passes for optimism this year. A case in point: Industry types have jumped on the success of short messaging service, or SMS, as evidence that mobile phone users are an imaginative and tech savvy lot willing to embrace the new. Indeed, it's true that SMS has enjoyed massive growth - 50 billion were sent in the first quarter of this year, a five-fold increase over a year ago - but the industry can hardly take credit for that.
SMS is merely a means to send text and a very limited range of other data to and from mobile phones. This had little or nothing to do with the industry, which never really promoted the service, and it is only belatedly that companies have realized its business potential. The SMS phenomenon took off in spite of, rather than because of, the industry, and is more a reflection of how users have downgraded their expectations of what their mobile phones can do than of any great faith in the medium.
In a nutshell, the industry has messed up badly. A T Kearney Ltd., a technology consulting firm, in late May released a scathing survey called "A Rude Awakening for WAP Dreamers," which, its preamble suggested, "should send shivers down the spines of mobile network operators and handset manufacturers." Despite carriers' costs of around $300 billion for spectrum licenses and technology, the proportion of subscribers who say they intend to use their phones for buying stuff (called m-commerce, for mobile-commerce) has fallen sharply since last July. Put simply, ordinary folks no longer see their mobile phone as the center of their world.
This is depressing stuff. Technologies such as Bluetooth, which allows short-range, continual wireless communication between different gadgets, are in the doldrums in part because of a lack of interesting products. I tried out Ericsson's Bluetooth-enabled earpiece headset[see
gullfoss2.fcc.gov] , that wirelessly connects to the phone, which is by far the jazziest of the minuscule range of products on offer. While it looked great, it was too fiddly and confusing for me to buy one.
But the main reason for public indifference is WAP, or Wireless Application Protocol, the industry standard the enable mobile telephones to access Web-like services. Those users who have tried WAP have come away unimpressed, partly because it takes so long to navigate through all the menus at current mobile speeds, but also because there's not much content out there and because users are - rightly -- skeptical about the security of online transactions.
Now WAP is back. Sometime midyear this year, version 2.0 of the standard will be released, which should, in theory, make things easier for companies developing content. But don't hold your breath. Eventually, of course, WAP or something like it, will take hold and have its uses. And once 3G is deployed - sometime in the next four years, probably - mobile telephones will start to behave more like we've been told they would. This means everything from being able to play videos, to offering so-called locator services that can identify users and ascertain whether they're running, walking, driving, or (based on their heart rate) in the mood for a coffee or a divorce lawyer.
But that is some way off. In the meantime, expect to see a slow move by operators to intermediate technologies, referred to as 2.5G. They upgrade existing equipment with new bits of hardware to make WAP and mobile Internet access (where you hook up your laptop to a mobile phone) a less teeth-grinding experience.
Just don't expect miracles. I've surfed the Web using Ericsson's 2.5G system at speeds of about 28.8 kilobits per second, about half of what you would expect on a land-line connection, and, with a clever bit of software that compresses images and filters out ads, it is definitely workable.
WAP, meanwhile, will sneak back in like a scolded dog, offering a much scaled-down menu of stuff, such as ringing tones that play the old pop song "Hang On Sloopy". My friend Andy, who runs a company that develops mobile content services for Nokia, called inTouch, says it's a much safer bet for him to offer a teenage-oriented mix of ring tones, images and animations than complex business-related services. He then sent my mobile phone an image of what looks like a squashed cockroach but is apparently a fireworks display emblazoned with the word `Happy'.
And, I never thought I would say this, but I'm pretty excited about it.
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