3G Vodafone live!
Flashing back to November when we should have probably celebrated UMTS (WCDMA) Over the Hump Week, and the text below was written then but never posted ...
3G Vodafone live! is Live ....
... in 13 Countries, Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, ...
... with a menu of 10 "commercially acceptable" UIM enabled multitasking multimedia mobile handsets from 6 manufacturers that are capable of international roaming and seamless handover of voice and data from 2G/2.5G GSM GPRS to WCDMA to GSM GPRS in 3, 4, or 5, frequency bands depending on the terminal.
Additional countries will be brought on stream in 2005 [like New Zealand launching shortly].
Vodafone becomes the second 'global' carrier to do a full scale commercial launch of 3GSM UMTS (WCDMA), following Hutchinson Whampoa's '3.'
With 140 million subscribers today, Vodafone's target is 10 million third-generation UMTS/WCDMA mobile phone customers by March 2006.
There will be speed bumps. Vodafone's 3G coverage is still sparse, and the next year will see fill-in as well as network expansion, overall network optimization, expansion of '3G services' offered, and some experimentation with price plans. There will be some debugging and flashing of existing handsets, some of which will perform better than others, and some vendors will be able to ramp production quicker than others. Overall performance of the network, of services, of handsets, and the handset range, can be expected to be much improved at this time next year.
Despite that, this is a promising beginning, and in coming months we will see the soft launches of T-Mobile, TIM, O2, Orange, Telia Sonera, and others become full scale commercial launches as well.
One year ago, we could not necessarily predict that UMTS (WCDMA) technology maturity would be where it is at today, and the overriding issues were intermodal/interfrequency handover which has significant network side dependencies, and that there would be a broad menu of commercially acceptable handsets from multiple suppliers. Overall wireless sector sentiment as a result was still neutral to bearish, and we really did not see that sentiment change until February 2004 when the 3GSM World Congress was held in Cannes. The year before, the atmosphere in Cannes was gloomy to the point of depression. The mood was cautiously optimistic this year, and next year it should be even more optimistic and upbeat. At CeBIT in Hannover last March a few new UMTS/WCDMA handsets were announced, but the majority were GPRS/EDGE. This year should be markedly different. We should see many announcements of models that will ship H2 2005.
UMTS/WCDMA is now commercially live on 50 networks in 24 countries with 9 additional precommercial networks coming live and 66 more licensed and in planning stages, with 13 manufacturers already delivering handsets and several others delivering data cards. WCDMA crossed the 10 million subscriber milestone in September, although at that time 65% of those subscribers were on NTT DoCoMo's FOMA network.
Meaningful milestones will be reached when the FOMA network becomes fully 3GPP compliant in early 2005 and when the collective subscribers of 'other' UMTS/WCDMA networks exceed FOMA subscribers which should themselves number over 10 million by the end of Q1 2005.
After observing this digital mobile wireless drama unfold over the last decade, starting with the FCC PCS auctions here in the States just 10 short years ago this month, 10 years after Vodafone first launched mobile wireless services in the UK, and just 12 years after the first digital wireless network launched in Germany, I am amazed at how far digital mobile wireless telephony has come, in what is really a remarkably short time span.
We have been watching the bowling pins fall and while we are nowhere close to a cdma based Global 3G (G3G) voice and multimedia mass market, I think it is safe to say that 3G UMTS/WCDMA made it over the first hump on November 10, 2004 with the 3G Vodafone live! commercial launch and the expansion of Hutchinson Whampoa's '3' handset lineup to 12 models.
The 3G UMTS/WCDMA Chasm Crossing:
* January 1998: ETSI chose WCDMA as the primary access mode of UMTS
* December 1998: 3GPP was formed and began standardization of UMTS/WCDMA
* October 2001: Non-3GPP compliant WCDMA was commercially launched in Japan (FOMA) in October 2001
* June 2002: The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) was formed to facilitate the standardization of uniform 2.5G/3G mobile wireless data services enablers based on open standards irrespective of G3G platform technology.
* March 2003: UMTS/WCDMA became commercially available in Europe ('3').
* UMTS/WCDMA became commercially available in Australia ('3') in April 2003.
* July 2004: UMTS/WCDMA became commercially available in the USA (AWS)
* September 2004: WCDMA crosses the 10 million subscriber milestone
* October 2004: UMTS/WCDMA is commercially live on 50 networks in 24 countries with 9 additional precommercial networks coming live and 66 more licensed and in planning stages, with 13 manufacturers delivering handsets and several others delivering data cards.
Into the G3G Tornado ...
... starting in the Bowling Alley:
* November 2004: Vodafone commercially launches 3G UMTS/WCDMA Vodafone Live! multimedia services and multimedia handsets in 13 countries in Europe and Asia.
* December 2004: 3G UMTS/WCDMA soft commercial launches with "commercially acceptable" handsets are scheduled by T-Mobile, TIM, O2, Orange, and Telia Sonera, and other carriers on networks that are already commercially live.
* December 2004: ~25 million WCDMA and UMTS handsets will have delivered to channels, with ~20 million delivering in 2004.
* 2005: UMTS/WCDMA Network expansion and optimization across Europe, Asia, and the USA with 20 to 30 additional commercial network launches.
* 2005: Trialing of HSDPA will commence in Europe and Japan
* H2 2005: Multiple models of fully type approved multimedia handsets available from each of the major handset manufacturers will be available for next years peak selling season.
* 2005: Between 40 to 50 million UMTS (WCDMA) are forecast to deliver into channels and over 50 million subscribers will be on board.
* 2006: HSDPA will commercially launch as a complement to WCDMA and HSUPA (EUL will trial).
* 2006: The first ARM11 powered multi-engine processor driven handsets with integrated modem and applications processors will launch commercially but concurrently the average wholesale ASP of UMTS handsets will probably drop below $300.
* 2006: 80 to 100 million UMTS (WCDMA) should deliver into channels and subscribers should top 100 million.
It should also be noted that since the initial commercial availability of CDMA2000. IS-856 1xEV-DO handsets became available in Korea in August 2002, and in Japan in November 2003:
* CDMA2000 1xRTT which once was called an interim step to '3G' by Qualcomm and CDG but which some now call '3G' has passed the 130 million subscriber mark.
* 16 1xEV-DO commercial networks using 1xRTT for voice (and data) have commercially launched and 14 1xEV-DO networks are scheduled to be deployed.
* 3G 1xEV-DO subscribers reached 8.3 billion in September 2004
* 3G 1xEV-DO subscribers should cross the 10 million barrier in December 2004 or shortly thereafter.
* H1 2005: 3G 1xEV-DO handsets will become available outside of Korea and Japan
* 2005: Between 14 to 18 million 1xEV-DO handsets and/or data cards are forecast to deliver into channels in 2005.
* 2005: Trialing of 1xEV-DO Release A will commence in Korea and the USA in late 2005 or early 2006 and be commercial outside Korea by 2007.
More on Big Red's Launch ...
Presentation slides from Vodafone's 3G launch ...
213.219.8.102
213.219.8.102
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213.219.8.102
Postscript
>> Vodafone 3G Statistics Emerge
3G Totally Resistible
Tony Dennis
The Inquirer
Friday 27 May 2005
theinquirer.net
It was very interesting indeed to see a world leading operator such as Vodafone release figures on how well its drive into 3G/W-CDMA is actually going. Since launching back in November 2004 (six months ago), it has managed to sign up 2.1 million 3G handset subscribers and a modest 300,000 data card users.
Given that it currently has a declared subscriber base of 154.8 million, that's only around 1.3 per cent who converted. When you compare this to, say 3 in the UK, which has 3 million subscribers, that's a pretty poor start. Especially since 100 per cent of 3's customers are on 3G.
What this really indicates is that 3G as a technology or application is nowhere near as compelling as it proponents initially envisaged. The industry has got to forget 3G as the vehicle for offering video calls because blatantly nobody really wants it.
What 3G can offer is a 'bigger pipe' and the obvious candidates for such capacity are music downloads and location based services. And email as 30K data card users indicate. µ <<
Vodafone's realistic target is 10 million subscribers by March end 2006. They are well launched, expanding and filling in coverage, adding handsets and services, and launching new markets. They should be in solid shape to launch a full scale marketing campaign by Q4 and their target is extremely realistic. <<
- Eric - |
