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Wireless net is ‘hopefully’ a year away: Microsoft

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CIOL Bureau
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SINGAPORE: A senior executive in software giant Microsoft Corp's mobility

unit said on Monday he hoped the prediction that widespread wireless data

services are just "a year away" comes true - for once.

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"I will be happy to say that I do believe that we are about a year away

from seeing the 'hockey stick,' and I'd love to come back next year and prove

that I was right," Juha Christensen, a mobile phone industry veteran and

vice president for sales and marketing at Microsoft's mobility group, told a

conference.

He was referring to an expected surge in wireless Internet activity. But

Christensen also said that such "year-away" predictions had been made,

and proven wrong, for years. What's not a joke is that the world's mobile

carriers desperately need the wireless Internet to become a cash-spinner, and

quickly.

Cellular carriers, which shelled out more than $100 million in Europe alone

for third-generation (3G) mobile phone spectrum, are groaning under debt that

averages $650 to $680 per subscriber, and would peak at $700 to $750 over the

next year, he said.

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Yearly per subscriber revenue averages roughly $530, Christensen noted.

"We do believe that the profit per subscriber will grow in a wireless data

scenario," he said. With profitability from voice services stagnating, he

said, "imagine if wireless data was not happening. Then the networks would

have a substantial problem."

He said the development of mobile data would break into three

"waves." The first was wireless access to basic applications, such as

e-mail and messaging.

The second wave takes advantage of the ability to know the user's location,

personalizes content and takes advantage of the "always-on" capability

of so-called packet-switched (as opposed to circuit-switched) networks. The

third incorporates streaming audio and video. Christensen said the industry was

between the first and second waves at the moment.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.

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