Michael, there's a rather basic problem with your arguemnt: Operators
*didn't* buy 3G to do streaming video!
If you *listen* to them, they say that 3G is about voice capacity for the
first 5 years at least, with data the icing on the cake, not the cake
itself. It's all very well to say that you can add capacity to GSM, and
indeed so you can. But that route has been taken as far as it will go. GSM
was designed at a time when people thought there was a market for at most 4M
mobile subscribers in the UK - there are now over 40 million.
That is, there is a point at which it is more economical to build a new
network - even if you have to buy a licence - than continue adding capacity
to a netork that's already handling ten times the traffic that it was
concieved for. That point, for the leading operators, has now been passed.
3G is cheaper than struggling on with GSM.
Now, it's perfectly true that consumers show no interest in mobile
multimedia services. If you'd asked, they'd have shown no interest in the
internet, either, but that's by the by. But they do rather like mobile
voice, I think you'd agree. And 3G gives operators the ability to do *all*
voice by mobile - to completely replace a country's fixed voice network.
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Received on Thu May 17 12:37:22 2001