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To: elmatador who wrote (5641)	10/22/1999 8:49:00 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 12823

This views from several analysts shows an interesting twist: Voice will be ported to wireless networks leaving the fixed network for data. This is a possibility. Take Sweden for instance: In stark contrast with the US, where local calls are free, in Sweden local calls and subscription fees have become relatively more expensive while long-distance and international telephony are subject to heavy price competition. This will surely drive subscribers to use cheaper wireless voice and stopping use the fixed network. Mobile Poses Challenge to Europe's Traditional Phone Companies By Kate Norton at Bloomberg News 11 October 1999 Europe's former phone monopolies thought their biggest problem when the continent was opened to competition in January 1998 would be rivals seeking to offer traditional voice services. Few expected to be looking over their shoulders at the mobile phone operators. Increasingly, they are. Mobile phone use in Europe has soared in recent years as call prices fall and prepaid packages boost their popularity among non-business users. Now, the U.K.'s Orange Plc and other mobile companies are out to snatch business from traditional operators, leaving the region's former phone monopolies scrambling to beef up their own wireless offerings. "It's quite a large threat," said Tim Sheedy, an analyst at International Data Corp. "Even some of the major traditional carriers have accepted that that's where the future lies." The International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations agency that's sponsoring a major industry gathering in Geneva this week called Telecom '99, estimates the number of mobile subscribers worldwide will overtake users of traditional phones by 2010. Sales generated from mobile business will exceed that of conventional phones around 2004, according to ITU forecasts. Some 70 percent of voice traffic will be carried without wires by 2003 in Western Europe alone, according to a recent International Data Corp. study, from just a fraction a decade ago. In Finland, cellular subscribers already outnumber users of traditional phones, and it's not uncommon for some consumers to skip the house line altogether. That pattern is set to develop in the rest of Europe, analysts say. More than 50 percent of the European population is expected to have a mobile phone by the end of 2001, according to Salomon Smith Barney estimates. That's up from 24 percent at the end of last year. In the U.K. for example, Orange Chief Executive Hans Snook has long voiced the belief that wireless phones will eventually displace traditional services, and the company has introduced an array of tariff plans and services to encourage the switch. "For companies like Orange, there is a very real opportunity," said Peter Richardson, principal analyst at Gartner Group's Dataquest research arm. "Considering young people are one of the biggest mobile growth sectors and will feel little pressure when they grow up to get a fixed line, over 10 years the potential is enormous" for mobile to grab the bulk of the voice business, he said. It's not just the voice business of traditional phone companies that mobile operators are after. They're aiming to grab more data and Internet traffic, too, with the help of new technology, such as wireless access protocol that enables mobile users to access information over the Internet. Vodafone AirTouch Plc, the world's largest wireless provider, and Orange both plan to set up Internet services in the U.K. A new generation of mobile phone technology, debuting in 2001, will make it easy for cellular users to even hold videoconferences on the run. The market for global mobile data services is expected to grow 75 percent annually and be worth more than $80 billion by 2005, according to Microsoft Corp. and British Telecommunications Plc estimates. Traditional phone companies, eager to protect their turf, meanwhile, are aiming to steal a march on pure mobile operators by integrating their mobile and conventional phone services. British Telecommunications Plc and Viag Interkom, its German phone partnership with Viag AG and Norway's Telenor A/S, earlier this year introduced a service that lets customers have one phone number that they can use both at home and on the go. BT and AT&T Corp., meanwhile, are extending current partnerships to include closer collaboration on mobile operations. Other long-distance and local carriers are buying what they need. MCI WorldCom Inc. last week agreed to acquire rival Sprint Corp. for $129 billion in the world's biggest corporate takeover, gaining a nationwide wireless network. Though mobile operators will succeed in snatching the bulk of voice traffic, they'll have less of an impact on conventional operators when it comes to data, analysts say. Mobile operators will carry more data and Internet traffic in the consumer market, but their networks just can't provide the kind of quality needed for data transfer that the more lucrative corporate market demands, they said. "While some corporations are doing their whole voice telephone over mobile, they aren't about to use wireless for their local area networks," IDC's Sheedy said.