I'm on record as being very skeptical that wireless telephony "3G" technology will be anything resembling the financial, market, and technical success that its proponents hope for. In short (very short), the technology and the business model of the vast majority of 3G service providers is fundamentally flawed. The lone exception that I've seen to date is Monet Mobile Networks.
"3G" might have had a chance had it not been for the spectacular (and getting better) market and price/performance success of 802.11b / Wi-Fi products and resulting services. 802.11b technology is becoming so widespread and so inexpensive that it is stealing much of the potential market for "3G".
Three trends, all vastly under-reported are driving this:
- Cheap backhaul bandwidth. Forget T-1 and DSL... think fixed wireless provided by existing or new Broadband Wireless Internet Access service providers; quite possibly using underutilized MMDS or LMDS spectrum and systems.
- Putting wireless hot spots wherever there is a potential group of users, installed by individual entrepreneurs driven by a profit motive. They will find the places people want to communicate (and increasingly, locations will want to have a wireless hot spot as an amenity).
- PDA's will rapidly evolve to having 802.11b capability for little incremental cost, form factor, or battery life
Three recent articles illustrate these points:
- June 24, 2002, Wireless Week - Toshiba Plans Broad WLAN Services: Toshiba will offer an 802.11b AP with a built-in router and offer an inexpensive service for same to allow individuals to easily and inexpensively construct for-pay wireless hot spots. (The back-end services are almost certainly going to be provided by hereUare Communications.)
- July 1, 2002, 802.11 Planet -Symbol, Socket Bring Wi-Fi to PDAs: 802.11b capability for PDAs
- July 3, 2002, Wireless Week - Sidgmore: All [Worldcom] Wireless Assets For Sale: States for the first time that Worldcom's MMDS spectrum is for sale. This development will have the effect of paralyzing MMDS deployments and sales of MMDS equipment as everything relating to MMDS in the US is now in play. A best-case scenario would be that MMDS spectrum is made available on a piecemeal basis to motivated, capable WISPs that actually use MMDS spectrum to service revenue customers at a profit - novel concept.
More Momentum For Mesh Networking
I think that Mesh Networking, and its inevitable use in conjunction with Wireless Hot Spots, is another vastly under-reported (and, simultaneously, over-hyped) trend. In a July 2, 2002 article on 802.11 Planet, Eric Griffith writes Mitsubishi's Relay (Mesh) Network is MOTERAN. Mitsubishi entering the market for Wireless Mesh Networking will likely motivate other Mesh vendors to accelerate the development and release of future generations of their Mesh products. For example, Mesh Networks (quoted in the article) has yet to actually release a product, and is in serious danger of being rendered irrelevant and over-hyped if it doesn't soon release an actual product.
12:21:23 PM 
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