Well, we've advised our clients to disregard comment on telecoms from that
particular newspaper, after they published two untrue stories in the space
of a week, one on Vodafone and one on BT Wireless. This really has the same
character: deeply misleading.
As regards the article itself, I don't understand why they printed it: two
statements of the blindingly obvious, I would have thought. European
operators could have launched the same service as DoCoMo today - but instead
they will wait for dual-mode handsets. And, they will offer coverage over
larger areas than DoCoMo. Hence the services will have a different
character: the European ones, inarguably, will be more commercial and more
sophisticated than the one that will launch on Monday. So what?
"3G implementations around Europe might differ not only on a software,
but also on a hardware level."
When GSM was launched, you got a better signal on an Ericsson network with
an Ericsson handset. Nokia handsets still worked on an Ericsson network -
it's just a feature of immature networks that gear from one manufacturer
works better together.
Moreover, almost all of the networks in Europe are under pan-European
ownership. Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, and BT aren't going to deploy
different versions of 3G in different local operations!
I think the worst that could happen would be that Europeans going to Japan
(and vice versa) will need 'dual-mode' handsets comparable to the 'tri-band'
800/1800/1900 GSM handsets. Pan-European networks will be seamless. Indeed,
my understanding of the differences in the DoCoMo system is that it has to
do with handover mechanics: the handsets are interchangable with Euroean
ones, but not the network itself.
Benedict Evans
WestLB Panmure
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Received on Thu Sep 27 09:42:04 2001