Time to look to the future, not the past like so many of the thread historians.
Toshiba delays 3G work with Siemens
Thursday 27 September 2001
The rapid cooling of interest in third-generation (3G) cellular services is forcing Toshiba to delay its joint development work with Siemens.
"The market has not developed how we expected it to develop," said Midori Suzuki, a spokeswoman for Toshiba.
Suzuki denied reports in the Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun newspaper this week that Toshiba had originally planned to send 100 engineers to Germany to work with Siemens.
The two companies announced in November 2000 that they would pool their resources to research and develop technologies for 3G mobile phone handsets and terminals that could also access second-generation (2G) networks.
At the time of the announcement, the companies said they expected to produce the first dual-mode GSM/WCDMA (Global System for Mobile Communications/Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) handsets by early 2002, but that schedule is now unlikely to be achieved.
"We are continuing to talk with Siemens," said Suzuki. She conceded that there was still no finalised agreement, even though the deal was first announced nearly a year ago.
The company has also cut its handset shipment estimates for the US market by more than half. Originally Toshiba had expected to ship nearly six million handsets to the US in the current fiscal year, which runs until the end of March 2002. The figure has now been revised to just under three million.
Japanese mobile handset shipments have been revised upwards slightly, from three-and-a-half million to nearly four million, while Personal Handyphone System handset shipments have been revised down from half a million to just under a quarter of a million.
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Migration to 3G looks shaky
Paul Allen, Network News [18-09-2001]
Speakers at last week's launch of Ericsson's T39 mobile phone became the victims of nerves brought on by a shoddy technical set up. With lights dimming and brightening at will, and Powerpoint shows moving on apace with no obvious connection to the speaker's text, it was more than stage fright on the part of the Ericsson executives who took part.
But these are nervous times for handset companies, with the UK market almost at saturation point. Service providers are placing the commercial onus on services and content and, for these to be effective, a faster network is required.
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) uses the GSM network infrastructure but delivers, in theory, a much faster service than the 9.6Kbps of the second-generation (2G) network. Dubbed 2.5G, GPRS is very much a migratory technology on the road to Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks.
But with banks nervous about the state of telecoms companies, 2.5G may be the best bet for now.
Rollout timelines vary from between 18 months and five years, depending on which analyst you ask. With this level of uncertainty, network managers should be taking a look at how GPRS technology could kick start their mobile internet strategies.
Network managers have been understandably cautious following the hype over Wap services. Those who are currently considering the technology are keen to see if it can deliver the 40Kbps promised by vendors.
But they are likely to be disappointed. Orange has already admitted to Network News that 20Kbps is a far more realistic transfer rate.
Oliver Nash, managing director at independent television production company Northiam Films, said he would like to use the technology to send digital images from potential film locations to producers and directors, so that decisions about suitable sets can be made more quickly.
"If we had someone at a potential location with a digital camera and a laptop sending us stills, we could reject unsuitable venues instantly. That would save us time, which is always welcome," he said. "But I'll believe it when I see it."
But even if existing services seem slow, there is no excuse for not keeping up with mobile internet technologies. It is the future for businesses, and network managers should evaluate each emerging technology, although a little scepticism about telco vendor claims is a useful thing.
GPRS: some facts and figures
The technology uses existing GSM networks, but typically uses four timeslots: one upstream, delivering data to the service provider, and three downstream, bringing web pages and application data to the handset.
Corporate services are now available from BT Cellnet and Vodafone. Orange plans to launch in late summer, while One2One is aiming for the end of October. Data transfer rates are expected to range between 10Kbps and 40Kbps, depending on local network congestion.
Billing is based on how much data you download rather than the duration of a connection. Analysts expect operators to charge a premium rate for additional timeslots in future, which will speed up connections. Handsets are thin on the ground and usability issues remain.
A range of phones and third-party add-ons for personal digital assistants and palmtop computers, including PC cards that will connect users to their corporate local area networks, is expected to appear by the end of this year.
GPRS will be an application testing ground for high-speed UMTS networks, expected to arrive in 2002, although pundits warn that it could be as late as 2004. Analysts have urged network managers to use GPRS as a migratory path.
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Cell phone penetration tops 50 percent
If you want to be in an ever-smaller group of people, don't have a cellular telephone. The latest figures show that, for the first time, more than half of all Americans in major metropolitan areas have one. Lower cost is a big reason.
As the average price of a wireless phone call continues to drop, more consumers are subscribing to wireless service than ever before, according to a J.D. Power and Associates study.
In 2001, 52 percent of households in the 25 largest U.S. markets surveyed use wireless phone service. This is a 93 percent household penetration increase over 1995, or an average of 12 percent per year, the Power study says. At the same time, the current average reported cost per minute for a wireless phone call is 14 cents, compared to 56 cents per call in 1995.
"While the drop in wireless call rates is a boon for consumers, providers are having a harder time generating the same amount of revenue per customer that they once received," says Kirk Parsons, director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates in Southern California.
"With the cost of acquiring each new customer ranging between $350-$475, it is imperative for wireless providers to make a serious effort to retain customers with loyalty programs and superior service," he says.
The study indicates that the trend of reduced revenue and increased customer turnover may continue in the foreseeable future. For example, average monthly spending on wireless service has dropped from $66 to $61 per month since 2000 -- the largest decline since 1996. At the same time, the length of time a typical wireless user stays with a carrier before switching is growing shorter -- from 2.54 years on average in 1999 to 2.40 years in 2001. |
