Winners and Losers - "3" misses March deadline?
Telecoms.com (from Europe)
17-JAN-2003
It's been an interesting week on the Winners and Losers front, with a diverse range of players involved. British bird-life, urban paramilitaries and the very house of God have all got in on the act, providing a number of firsts. Before we get to that, though, the Informer had a chat with Craig Ehrlich, incoming chairman of the GSM Association, this week. It was very interesting, he's clearly more dynamic than his predecessors and plans to haul the Association back into shape, making it a more powerful force for the progression of the industry.
Readers may be familiar with the restructuring of the organisation that sees power shifted to a 21-strong board of operator CEOs. 12 are permanent members by dint of being the world's largest players by customer numbers while the other nine will be rotated every two years to allow more operators - there are 537 in all - the chance to make themselves heard. The final nine have yet to be announced but look set to be politically inclusive. Mr Ehrlich let slip that Hutchison will probably be among them due to its status as "a 3G leader". Leader? Is that really justified? Don't you have to have actually achieved something to be declared a leader in a given field? Pretty much all Hutch's 3G outfit has managed to do so far is miss a bunch of launch deadlines and let's face it, DoCoMo was doing that years ago, so it's hardly pioneering.
So Hutch is a winner this week, assuming all goes as Mr Ehrlich suggested, for managing to wangle itself an influential position over hundreds of other operators, without a single 3G customer to its name. Incidentally reports in the UK press this week suggested that 3 UK has 1,000 handsets out in the market. Not so, a Hutch insider told the Informer. There won't be that many around until at least the end of the month and, what's more, the March deadline is probably going to slide as well. Never mind, if they're not actually running a network, they'll have more time to run the GSM industry instead.
Elsewhere, as a (lapsed) member (by about 18 years) of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Informer was most distressed to read reports suggesting that GSM radio masts have been identified as a potential cause for the dramatic decline in the British sparrow population. Over the past 30 years, apparently, the number of sparrows has fallen from 24m to less than 14m. Since 1994, when large numbers of masts started appearing, the population in London has dropped by 75%. From the depths of his childhood the Informer vaguely recalls something about sparrow hawks being partly to blame, although he could well be completely wrong. A study, involving 30,000 concerned ornithologists, is to be undertaken into the theory...
...Anyway, this week's prize turkeys...
Operators in Scotland, who might be planning to run adult services across their networks. The Baptist Union of Scotland has warned its churches not to allow these operators to site antennas on their property. Contrary to what you might expect, this is not because transmissions interfere with messages from God, rather it is the case that the Union does not wish to have naked women, albeit invisible ones broken down into tiny digital fragments, flying around its places of worship.
Operators in Northern Ireland, who now face increased opposition to their own mast siting plans. It seems that the Ulster Volunteer Force, a loyalist paramilitary terrorist organisation, more often concerned with knee-capping than environmental protest, has joined the debate. A new mast was vandalised and a piece of card found at the site the next day on which had been scrawled the ominous UVF initials. Ultra Violent Frequencies, perhaps?
Singaporean operators, who have had their request for a delay to 3G roll-out deadlines flatly refused by the nation's regulatory authority. The rules state that roll-out has to be complete by the end of 2004.
While this week's golden geese...
The entire telecoms sector, following Goldman Sachs' assertion that the market has finally bottomed out. The bank upgraded its view of operators to 'attractive' and suggested that visibility has improved along with the sector's earnings potential. The Informer will be getting his company jet out of storage next week.
Singapore's MobileOne, which has reported after tax profits - yes, after tax profits - of S$128.4m for the year just gone. This is 28% up on 2001 and the company also reported that non-voice services among its post-paid client base are now generating 13% of revenues.
Wireless LAN fans, with the announcement that Lufthansa and Cisco have begun commercial trials of WLAN connectivity on board aircraft in flight. The Frankfurt to Washington DC flight on Wednesday this week was the first on which customers could connect to the web. BA plans similar services, to be introduced in the next couple of months.
telecoms.com
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" Not so, a Hutch insider told the Informer. There won't be that many around until at least the end of the month and, what's more, the March deadline is probably going to slide as well.
ROTFLMAO!
The Cannes GSM World Conference in February is going to be a real barn burner.
Will Li show up with a TV on a leash?
Will he pass out SIM cards?
LOL! |
