3G deployment better late than never - report

March 30, 2004

Despite many years of delays, it seems to be better late than never for 3G wireless deployments, reports In-Stat/MDR. The high-tech market research firm reports that, despite all the problems associated with 3G, a fair number of operators have launched commercial services and many other carriers have purchased infrastructure equipment, but have yet to deploy 3G commercially.

3G is fulfilling its promise of offering the increased capacity, lower-cost infrastructure that carriers have wanted all along. For this reason, 3G has been a partial success for those carriers that are spectrum constrained, and this generally is in Japan. For Europeans, 3G is helping to keep costs low. A few carriers in Europe have started offering 3G voice service at lower prices than other carriers.

"Although the press has long been publishing stories about the doom and gloom of 3G, the reality is that 3G is happening, although maybe a bit later and smaller than many had hoped," says Allen Nogee, a Principal Analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "3G infrastructure is shipping, 3G licenses are being used, and there are a fair number of 3G handsets available. If there is one big missing aspect of 3G, it would have to be subscribers, especially outside of South Korea and Japan."

The delays in the rollout of 3G can be attributed to many factors, but the main three would be the lack of good inexpensive handsets, technical issues, and a general lack of consumer interest. Note that good handsets are starting to appear in greater numbers, and most of the technical issues have been resolved. The last piece of the puzzle to fall in place is demand for 3G from the consumer. It is this last aspect that may be the biggest challenge for 3G. However, as uses for the new technology grow, and demand for its unique services increase, 3G will grow into a valuable service, and will not only be nice to have, but a necessity.

The report, 3G Deployment Status: Better Late Than Never?, looks at some of the issues related to deploying 3G throughout the world, and contains the status of almost 200 3G carriers who have, or will soon deploy 3G, and includes the air-interface they use, the dates and amounts of recent 3G infrastructure contracts awarded, who they purchase infrastructure from (when known), and estimates of the number of W-CDMA Node B's they purchased in 2002 and 2003. Carriers are sorted by launch date, country, and air-interface deployed.