3G is dead???
Marty Cooper, "inventor" of cellular, says that 3G makes him yawn and it's virtually no better than GPRS. Not sure what he is advocating otherwise (needs looking into), but he reduces our attention solely to the data rate and leaves out all other features of UMTS that could be noted. This also tends to happen a lot with advocates of WiFi dismiss 3G. I'm not saying this is where Marty is coming from, but dismissals are usually along the same lines - 3G is too slow and who needs it now anyway post-WiFi. Well, I may have misunderstood something about the US wireless market I have to admit, but I frankly don't understand the comparison.
Mass adoption of wireless applications of one form or another is, in my opinion (as someone who spends a lot of time talking to operators and training people in the technology) inevitable. And I mean mass adoption, let's say at least 50% of users in today's saturated mobile markets will be using wireless apps (richer than text messaging) within the next 5 years. Some of the exciting stuff we have yet to see - well, let's be frank, we have yet to see most of it and maybe that's why Marty is yawning. Here I agree with Marty that the operators seem to be the slowest link in the value chain, but through their rapidly maturing developer programs they seem to be heading in the right direction. Of course I am talking about the UK here and European operators are probably in similar positions.
The point is that most people won't need huge data rates, they just need reliable truly always-on service, which means being available wherever the user might be. That is what 3G networks are being rolled out to provide, as well as better voice capacity and service. UMTS is WAN not LAN, and WiFi is definitely not WAN, even taking into consideration the possible proliferation of public access points (and that has many issues that put it back in the dark ages compared with the mobility, billing and security management mastered in GSM some 10 years ago, nevermind that I have to make sure I'm in Starbucks when I want to check my email or update my blog).
Now are we expecting that these mass-adoption users are going to be accessing mobile applications on PDA's over WiFi? I don't think so. Will most of them ever need the promised high data rates of 3G. I don't think so either. But collectively they will need a reliable and sufficiently beefy mobile data network that only 3G can provide, certainly not GPRS which is really a GSM afterthought, so it is wrong to take the stance that we have GPRS, so why bother with 3G. This could be discussed in a separate article.
On a related point, I am still slightly baffled by what the "open spectrum" advocates are really driving at when they point fingers at the "monopolistic" hoarding of spectrum by operators. I'm not saying Marty is on this wavelength, but I am reminded of some of their false claims (not including the technical ones to do with the real capacity of specturm being greater than we give it credit for - not sure where this new bit of information theory has come from). The problem with some writings I have seen is that there is an assumption that an open free-for-all market will provide the best possible connectivity and service for end users? Says who? Where can we find this theory being practised? Comparisons with the Internet are false ones. Ideas such as standards and competition through open standards seems to have been missed, like the success of GSM thanks to the huge commitment of operators and massive investment by the network infrastucture vendors. The technology needed in digital cellular has always been on the very bleeding edge of the cost-effective capabilities of silicon. Just the air-interface processing alone was such that a GSM handset when they came out was hugely more powerful than the early Pentium PC's. The economies of scale for GSM were by virtue of the pre-agreed commitment to the standard, but I am prepared to be corrected. The affordable end-user economies were by virtue of the competing operators in the same markets - a level of competition that remains highly aggressive in most GSM markets. I think these considerations are real ones when debating further opening of the spectrum, which incidentally I agree with in principle.
But what people seem to misunderstand totally is that mobile telephony and WiFi are totally different things - completely different.
One particular point to note is that by and large mobile telephony is exceptionally high quality and robust with mature 2G systems. The mobile telephony service of most GSM operators is incredibly predictable. It works nearly all of the time and it works well. The phones work incredibly well in most places you try to use them these days. And how many times do you have to "reboot" your mobile phone? How often do you need to resend a text message? A lot of people seem to forget that it is within this very stable and so conservative environment that operators are trying to launch unknown, largely untested services. I for one was shocked with the relatively fast adoption of J2ME, or more accurately MIDP, or even more accurately MIDP 1.0!! In fact, MIDP 1.0 is missing all of the useful features that would ordinarily make it acceptable for deployment in such an environment - all the features that you will find in the MIDP 2.0 spec (see my earlier posting). Technical support for this stuff is going to prove challenging. The very real possibility of hitherto unknown weaknesses, say for hacking and viruses, could cause real problems in mobile markets. Many mobile phone users are not hardened PC users who accept (or do they?) the rough edges of modern software practises.
This is perhaps where the misunderstanding lies in the false comparisons between WiFi and 3G. WiFi is just a technology. 3G is technology, yes, but it is intimately linked with service. It is accessed and paid for as a service by end-users, not as a piece of technology. The open-spectrum advocates who look with excitement at WiFi and what else might be possible, are possibly confusing these ideas. Open spectrum may lead to some interesting technologies emerging and yes, we may benefit from such innovations. But a useful service does not necessarily follow. And here again, the comparisons with the Internet do not apply. The main service paid for in the Internet world is ISP access and being crude, the levels of skill, expertise and investment to become and ISP versus a mobile operator are incomparable. But i stand to be corrected. Open spectrum may not be the answer to effective mobile communications, but there arguments are probably more complex than I have made them out to be here. (I usually write postings late at night!)
I am frustrated by the sedate pace of 3G and wireless data services getting to the market, especially as what is needed is innovative applications, but their have been very little incentives for innovators to bring their wares to the operators' doors. Pre-GPRS, operators were just glorified utility companies with huge marketing budgets and clueless about data. They are still struggling to make the transition. But for my money, 3G is definitely needed and will provide a whole raft of useful services to end-user in a mass-market situation. It is certainly not dead, unless we are talking about the dead before becoming alive.
12:23:09 AM 
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