This week, Windows Mobile Editor Anthony Newman has a touch of the luddite about him, and tells everyone just why 3G is going down in flames.
A couple of years ago, 3G was all the rage, especially here in the UK. Our mobile networks nearly bankrupted themselves splashing out billions of pounds on contracts to run third-generation networks, and the media was buzzing with speculation.
Now, in 2004, the UK has one 3G network, Three, run by Hutchinson Telecom. Despite heavy promotion and some seriously cheap offers, the network has made little impact on the phones one sees out-and-about, and more importantly hasn't changed the way people use those phones. Let's explore some of the reasons for this.
The first, and most obvious, is simply critical mass. If you're the only person with a video mobile, you can't use any of its communication features (and I'm discounting here the 'value added content' of downloading video clips - just video calling and video messaging, the two major selling points of 3G networks). The more people that own them, the more useful it gets.
However, until lots of people own them, they're next to useless, and few will make the leap unless they're also great as conventional handsets. Unfortunately, the current batch of 3G phones are large, ugly and have really awful battery life by the standards of 2.5G phones, even if they are more capable. It's just like being back in 1995.
But all this doesn't disguise a fundamental problem with the whole 3G concept. People like calling because it's natural. People like texting because it's subtle, incredibly useful and can be done anywhere. People like picture messaging because it's quick, cheap and expressive. The same can't be said of video messaging: great for sending someone a birthday message (if they can view it), but useless for telling someone that you'll be late or conveying a message from a noisy bar.
Video calling is perhaps even more limited. You can't do it while walking down the street, in case you bump into something; you can't use it to call in sick at work, or make formal calls from your bed... you get the picture, or rather, don't, if you'll pardon the pun. Worst of all, they're totally inappropriate for business calls, and in fact add very little to the communication possibilities of a call, especially with the tiny, jumpy picture transmitted on current networks.
So we look to data as the saviour of 3G. It can pull information much faster than a standard GPRS link on a 2.5G network, and so is perfect for mobile workers. The problem, of course, is that 3G networks are far from ubiquitous, and also that (at least in the UK) the operators are still seeing the infrastructure as a vehicle not for data per se, but for content delivery: sport clips and the like. Consumers don't really need it, and businesses can't use it. And even if they could, the handsets are frequently bereft of IR or Bluetooth, leaving that valuable data connection isolated from other productivity tools.
Then again, they said TV would never catch on, either.
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