Urgency Slows For Wireless 3G
Just what do people want from 3G? That is the billion dollar question that is going to decide the fate of 3G. To some degree people don't know what they want because they don't know what is possible. The wireless industry needs to sell users a vision and then follow up with products and services that deliver said vision. The industry is great at selling a vision, but embarrassingly poor at following up. Not surprisingly US carriers are now considering putting 3G on hold indefinitely. Verizon and Sprint call their 1xRTT networks 3G, but we all know that technically they are only 2.5G. The GSM guys have it tougher since they need to go from GPRS to EDGE to realistically meet or beat the speeds of 1X. All of this is fine, there is no need to rush to 3G. We can do a lot with what we have and figure out what people will pay for when 3G is ready for prime time. Personally, I can do without video calls, but I would like a wireless jukebox in the sky.
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Filed Under: 3g
