Turns Out 2009 Will Be The Year Of 3G
from the gotta-wait... dept
For each of the past three years, someone has come out with a prediction that the current year would be "The Year of 3G" when third generation mobile phones and services would really gain user acceptance. Every year that's proven to be a very bad prediction. This year, is no different, as back in March people were once again saying that 2004 would be "The Year of 3G". Of course, there's just not that much 3G to go around (you're better off in Asia than elsewhere, but it's still mostly a 2G and 2.5G world). So, now, it turns out that it's not 2004, but maybe it's 2009 that will be the real year of 3G. At least that's what the latest predictions from Analysys Research seem to suggest. This isn't all that surprising. People in the industry always like to assume that customer adoption will be nearly instantaneous, and reality always lags behind. As we said a month ago, maybe we should just declare this the decade of 3G to cover all our bases. The other idea is to declare 3G dead (something some of the WiMax hypers in the press might actually do) - which seems to be the universal sign that a wireless technology is about to catch on.
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3G timetable
2009 may be "the year" for high 3G user saturation, but then it follows that from an infrastructure point of view the time is much nearer. Significant infrastructure build-out is a 2004-2006 prospect.
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