On Thursday, October 11, 2001, at 01:49 , Marc Printz wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Benjamin Kowarsch [mailto:benjk@mac.com]
>>
>> Seamless roaming between Europe and Japan will be a long and
>> stony way
>> though, so no reason to get excited just yet.
>
> What percentage of mobile phone users do you think do actually roam
> intercontinentally and really need a roaming phone? I consider myself as
> quite a traveller but I won't actually die without roaming (the
> particular
> situation in the Japan-Korea-HK triangle is not wonderful but I don't
> really
> mind too much to carry a GSM phone around). Obviously, if there's a way
> to
> do roaming then people will like it and go for the offer. But if its not
> there then they just don't: no one is going to be hurt. Particularly
> not the
> majority of people.
>
> Bottom line: why should a lack of intercontinental roaming keep me from
> getting excited about 3G - there are much better reasons I suspect.
Well, admittedly I was looking at it from a user perspective. If you are
a developer then you will certainly benefit from 3G deployment elsewhere
because your market increases - fair enough. From a user perspective
though, the most visible and immediate benefit would be roaming ability.
As far as "Roaming is not important to most users only for corporate
types" goes, I would say that there is a significant chicken and egg
element in this argument. Why do most people not care about roaming ?
Mainly because it is outrageously expensive and the benefits do not
justify the cost.
If roaming was reasonably priced and simple to use, then many people
would use it and get to appreciate the benefits. Especially in a country
like Japan where people like to travel overseas and many face the
inability to communicate in English or local languages to hinder their
overseas mobility, I believe that a reasonably priced roaming facility
would soon become a service on the best selling list.
Many restaurants and hotels overseas love their Japanese tourists and
hire Japanese speaking staff, print Japanese info materials, prepare
Japanese foods etc etc in order to entice them to keep coming. Mobile
phone operators could well entice their Japanese roamers with premium
services such as for example "tell us where you want to go on your
cellphone and we talk to the taxi driver to make sure you'll get there"
etc etc.
I tend to think that the only true dampener on roaming is the outrageous
cost, but there are more and more companies working on solutions to
bring that cost down, so it is reasonable to assume that there will be
progress.
rgds
benjamin
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Received on Thu Oct 11 08:54:04 2001