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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Walliker who wrote (17913)	1/9/2002 8:22:56 AM
From: foundation	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196653

"..How many thousand users do you think each business customer has?.." .0167 "30 businesses using 500 mobile phones" 16.7 users per business x 100 = 1670 users for 100 businesses. Sounds disappointing to me.... And they won't even talk about non-business GPRS subscriber numbers... probably because they're so good... ========== Disappointing take-up for BT Cellnet’s GPRS service After spending £50 million on its networks, BT Cellnet (soon to be known as O2) has admitted it has “just over a hundred” business customers for Active Suite, its GPRS broadband mobile service., a cost of £500,000 per customer. However, this represents an improvement on the 30 businesses using 500 mobile phones early in 2001. Stuart Newstead, vice president of new business products and partnerships at BT Cellnet, admitted that take-up had been slow but said the company had always maintained that certain conditions are needed for the service to be successful. "For these new types of services to work there needs to be three things: a good network, good handsets and devices, and good applications. In the past few months, especially with the Blackberry, we have seen these coming together in the business world," he explained. Blackberry is a portable email device that BT licensed from US company Research in Motion last September. "Before that it was a limited range of handsets and a limited user experience, but the Blackberry is more specialised, and email and secure intranet access are starting to come together," said Newstead. The GPRS network gives business users always-on access to their corporate network, email services and the internet. With a Motorola Timeport GPRS phone, the user can also access the network with a laptop. Data transfer is faster than on GSM phones and customers only pay for data sent and received. According to the most recent price information, supply, and installation of the server and software costs £18,5000, with a range of usage tariffs of between £30 to £65 per month per user. BT Cellnet has not yet released take-up figures for the consumer mobile GPRS service. Katrina Bond, principal analyst at telecoms researcher Analysys, said that operators were reluctant to promote GPRS heavily until the services and devices are more user friendly and reliable. "A lack of devices is the most frequently cited constraint to date, and applications for mobile workers with specific requirements are still in development," she said. uk.gsmbox.com ==========