NEWS & VIEWS: 2005: A year of 3G services?

Hong Kong hosted the 3G World Congress, and the event marked a new era of
cooperation between the various groups having 3G interests. Though signs of
differences were evident between CDMA and GSM on business issues, the event was
a showcase of the next-generation technologies, applications, and gadgets.

The show, originally promoted by the CDMA Development Group (CDG), this time
found support from the UMTS and the TD-SCDMA forums too. This in itself was an
evidence of the greater cooperation between the various promoters of 3G
technologies.

Though European countries, China, Korea, and Japan were the main target
markets for the vendors displaying their products, Southeast Asia and countries
like India, Pakistan were keenly watched for 3G services. "India is
certainly a market with high growth rate and with great potential for 3G
services. And with Pakistan issuing new licenses, we would be active in the
region more aggressively," said John Giamatteo, president (Asia-Pacific),
Nortel.

When it came to the high growth rate Indian mobile market, the spectrum
issues were not far behind. Perry LaForge, executive director of CDG and
Jean-Pierre Bienaimé, chairman of UMTS Forum urged TRAI to sort out the
spectrum muddle in interest of Indian mobile consumers.

Vendors like Nortel, Siemens, Motorola, ZTE, Huawie, Ericsson, and Lucent
displayed their new products in the 3G arena. China is scheduled to open 3G
licenses next year and is also preparing for the Beijing Olympic in 2008.

These vendors are now eyeing equipment orders for the Chinese standard TD-SCDMA.
They are also pushing in the all-IP-based evolution data only (EV-DO) for CDMA
networks and high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) for GSM carriers.

Brushing aside the delay on the launch of 3G services in Europe and Japan,
the participants were optimistic of 2005 being the 3G year. Officials of DoCoMo
and Vodafone admitted to the initial struggling phase but said that attractive
pricing, better phones, and multimedia applications would drive the 3G
subscriber base.

Handset makers Nokia, Motorola, and Siemens displayed 3G handsets at the
World Congress setting aside the fears of non-availability of terminals.

"In countries like India ,voice would be the primary revenue driver and
multimedia would be on the smaller side. But this does not mean sticking to the
older standards. 3G spectrum would fill the gap for more subscribers as well as
offering high speed 3G services," said Nortel a official.

Both carriers and the vendors are putting their bets on high-spend rate of
the users. The participants were also optimistic about subscribers paying more
for the enhanced content like serials and TV soaps apart from news, movie
trailers, clips, and screen savers on their handsets.

Anurag Prasad