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When Hutchison Whampoa launched its third generation offering '3' in the
UK and Italy in March 2003 it did not find many takers. By the end of 2003, '3'
could get only 210,000 subscribers in UK and 340,000 in Italy, of the targeted
two million. By March 2004, that is a year after launching 3 in the UK,
Hutchinson could get only 361,000 subscribers and 453,000 customers in Italy.
Services like video calling and football clips, touted by 3 as its key
differentiator, failed to generate the expected popular appeal.
The year 2004 has been different. A significant year for mobile broadband in
Europe as, after several false starts, the 3G plans of operators finally took
off. This became possible as many of the glitches, that had earlier prevented
its smooth take off, were worked out. While the 3G networks (especially the
radio side) became more robust and reliable, there was an abundance of 3G mobile
devices.
 What
has also worked in favor of the 3G operators is the fact that customer
acquisition costs have also come down rapidly and consistently. For instance, 3's
average cost of acquiring a customer was down by almost 20% by the end of 2004.
An indication of consumer take-up of 3G services came from Vodafone, on
January 27, when it said that customers in Europe have so far downloaded more
than 600,000 full-length music tracks. The operators launched 3G services just a
few weeks before
Christmas 2004. Services like video downloads too are now picking up.
"Video download is working well in Europe with customers downloading on an
average 10-15 minutes of it daily and they are paying for it," Vivek
Badrinath, chief technology officer, Orange, UK, recently told VOICE & DATA.
Operators in Europe are offering 3G/GPRS/Wi-Fi data cards that fit in the
PCMCIA slot of laptops, enabling them to access the web wirelessly, at almost
the speed of broadband (up to 256kbps). The number of combination mobile data
cards shipping in Europe is expected to rocket from 1.2 mn in 2004 to more than
5.7 mn in 2008.
However, there are a lot of issues that still need to be taken care off and
2005 would be crucial from that point. These issues include, among other things,
integrating 3G data services with the existing communication systems/strategies
of corporates, working out some of the glitches that still remain in data
delivery, and improving technologies that directly affect the users like content
display and handset interfaces.
Ravi Shekhar Pandey
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