Brownlee Thomas

Most planned 3G commercial service launches have not yet been commercially launched. The exception is South Korea — if 1xRTT EV-DO qualifies as 3G. It’s a fast data rate but involves a data-only overlay. The International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) definition of 3G qualifies EV-DO in terms of achieving data rates potentially as high as 2Mbps.

Pure 3G services would offer all-IP voice as well as data. A short summary follows of the status of several planned 3G service rollouts in Asia-Pacific and Europe.

• Korea: SK Telecom announced in November 2001 a field test of 1xEV-DO, Evolution-Data Optimized (data only) service, and in January 2002, it launched the service commercially in Seoul and Kyonggi Province. It’s now available in 26 cities. KT Freetel, the second largest Korean mobile carrier, launched 1xEV-DO network last May.
• Japan: NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA 3G service was launched in October 2001. Initially, it allowed mobile data transfers at 64kbps but this has been increased to 394kbps. However, only about 400,000 subscribers have signed on, far short of DoCoMo’s expectations.

• Hutchison 3G, a joint venture of Hutchison Telecom, KPN and DoCoMo, will launch commercial 3G services this year in the UK and Italy, to be followed next year by Sweden, Hong Kong, Australia, Austria, Israel, Denmark and Ireland. It has already rolled out full motion video, news, games and a range of interactive services to 1,000 "friendly" users in the UK and Italy to generate feedback. This is called a "soft launch" and most European carriers will likely replicate it.
• Vodafone, which owns mobile operators in 28 countries, has dropped its plans to market 3G services in Europe this year (it had expected to offer them in Britain, Germany and Spain by year end but now will wait until next April).
• Orange (which is owned by France Telecom and is a leading mobile operator in the UK and France) now does not expect a commercial launch of UMTS services before 2004.
• Mobilkom of Austria’s national UMTS network is ready for high-speed 3G services but commercial services won’t begin until the first half of 2003 and initially they’ll extend to only 25 percent of the country‘s population.
• Sonera has frozen its 3G plans in Germany and Italy. Sonera (of Finland) and Enitel (of Norway) dissolved their joint venture to provide 3G services in Norway and returned the license. Tele2 (of Sweden) also wants to return its 3G license in Norway, planning instead to use Telenor’s network.
• Spain’s Telefonica Moviles has dropped its 3G projects altogether in Germany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.

Companies developing mobile enterprise applications to be made accessible across organizations spanning multiple countries should anticipate slower than previously expected deployment of high-speed 3G mobile data services. Most mobile carriers have delayed their plans to launch commercial 3G services until 2003 or later, and initial launches likely will be restricted to major urban centers.

Enterprises interested in 3G mobile services should not expect extensive international roaming agreements for 3G services until at 18 to 24 months following the commercial launch of these services. This means that planned rollouts of mobile applications requiring fast data throughput rates before 2004 should do so on a country by country as the new services become available. Alternatively, companies should delay deployment plans for mobile applications requiring data throughput rates higher than 70kbps.