| 31st March 2004 - Despite many years
of delays, it seems to be better late than never
for 3G wireless deployments, reports In-Stat/MDR.
The high-tech market research firm reports that,
despite all the problems associated with 3G, a fair
number of operators have launched commercial services
and many other carriers have purchased infrastructure
equipment, but have yet to deploy 3G commercially.
3G is fulfilling its promise of offering the
increased capacity, lower-cost infrastructure
that carriers have wanted all along. For this
reason, 3G has been a partial success for those
carriers that are spectrum constrained, and this
generally is in Japan.
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For Europeans, 3G is helping to keep costs low. A few
carriers in Europe have started offering 3G voice service
at lower prices than other carriers.
Although the press has long been publishing stories
about the doom and gloom of 3G, the reality is that
3G is happening, although maybe a bit later and smaller
than many had hoped. 3G infrastructure is shipping,
3G licenses are being used, and there are a fair number
of 3G handsets available. If there is one big missing
aspect of 3G, it would have to be subscribers, especially
outside of South Korea and Japan.
The delays in the rollout of 3G can be attributed to
many factors, but the main three would be the lack of
good inexpensive handsets, technical issues, and a general
lack of consumer interest. Note that good handsets are
starting to appear in greater numbers, and most of the
technical issues have been resolved. The last piece
of the puzzle to fall in place is demand for 3G from
the consumer. It is this last aspect that may be the
biggest challenge for 3G. However, as uses for the new
technology grow, and demand for its unique services
increase, 3G will grow into a valuable service, and
will not only be nice to have, but a necessity.
This Market Alert is drawn from the In-Stat/MDR report,
"3G
Deployment Status: Better Late Than Never?",
which looks at some of the issues related to deploying
3G throughout the world, and contains the status of
almost 200 3G carriers who have, or will soon deploy
3G, and includes the air-interface they use, the dates
and amounts of recent 3G infrastructure contracts awarded,
who they purchase infrastructure from (when known),
and estimates of the number of W-CDMA Node B's they
purchased in 2002 and 2003. Carriers are sorted by launch
date, country, and air-interface deployed.
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