Monday, November 20, 2006
3G Wireless - A Wrecked Paraphernalia
Third Generation or 3G Wireless was introduced in 2002 in Europe, America, Japan and other parts of the World simultaneously. It is yet to get more that 5% of the market share of the worldwide mobile market. In Japan it has a mere 5% penetration in spite of the hype that has been built on 3G.For another two years it is not going to provide global coverage. Even in most developed countries it is still not offered Nationally, wherever 3G coverage is given it is not purely 3G. Coverage. The mobile switches between different technologies like 2G/2.5G in various regions of a country. It is now more than 4 years since 3G was offered, why has 3G not come up as promised? To analyze the deployment and failure of 3G so far let us understand what factors are inhibiting the adoption of 3G in a big way and why 3G has not been able to stand ground till now and that too even when people have started talking about 4G implementation in 2010.
The wireless landscape in 2006 - There are several competing wireless infrastructures like 2G,GPRS, WLANs, 3G and other evolving technologies, which will later become a part of 4G Wireless. - There are both large WLAN operators and 1000s of local hot-spot operators and WLAN clearinghouses offering global roaming access. WLANs are built into Laptops and hand-helds - Mobile operators are operating in extreme price pressure but are still dominant in handling end user relation (billing, roaming, seamless mobility etc.) - A continuous suite of terminals from voice-only ear-phones, handsets, handhelds, & lap-tops etc. are flooding the Market
State of Pure 3G operators in 2006 - Insignificant user base - No trusted Brand - No complete network - Dependent on unfavorable deals with incumbent GSM operators
History of 3G The term 3G was coined at academic conferences around 1990. Then 3G meant everything beyond GSM One 3G vision was mobility by wireless plus personal phone-numbers, following the Individual globally at closest fixed line. Later the "1G", "2G", "3G" and even "4G" terminology was captured by equipment vendors in the mid 90s for selling UMTS to the market and regulators.
On arrival had to target the Users who were Already GSM customers (phone number, voice mail, trusted Brand etc.),High-end users already using GPRS,Users Expected the 151 country global coverage of GSM and at least national GPRS coverage.
3G Arrival
On arrival 3G was hidden from users in a 2G/3G offer,3G only offered service in cities. 3G was hidden from the users in a branded GSM/GPRS/3G combination offer. To offer 2G/3G service, pure 3G operators had to strike unfavorable deals for network access with 2G operators, Handsets are GSM/GPRS/3G hence very expensive and complex. Incumbent operators target existing user base with 2G®2.5G®3G migration offers. Pure 3G operators tried to strike deals with 2G operators to offer geographical coverage but 3G operators were unable to secure deals for access to the 2G networks. Pure 3G became seen as a step down from GSM.Both 3G and 2G/2.5G are standards .Standardization freezes performance at a certain technological level and performance jumps when a new standard is fixed which also demands a total infrastructure changeover. The performance jump of 3G Standard against 2G/2.5G Standard does not warrant a total infrastructure change.
The Rule-of-thumb New infrastructure must offer at least 10 times better performance to replace old large installed base (This rule-of-thumb comes from Andrew Groove at Intel in his book "Only The Paranoid Survive" and has not been properly verified)
- 3G performance jump is not large enough to justify infrastructure replacement - 3G offers only 3-4 times better spectral efficiency than 2.5G - 3G bandwidth only 2-10 times better than 2.5G - GPRS gives better geographical coverage than 3G - 3G offers better bandwidth but coverage is more important for the consumers - 3G networks not even close to offering the coverage of GPRS - GPRS, a software upgrade on the GSM networks will probably always offer better global coverage than 3G. - WLANs offer better bandwidth than 3G - WLANs are already here with a large installed base on many company lap-tops - It is possible to cover hot-spots and city centers at low cost for WLAN Service Providers - WLAN base stations cost very less - WLAN equipment market is already being adopted at a large scale GPRS together with WLAN is a better solution for mobility in terms of technology and features and can be implemented at fraction of the cost of a 3G Upgrade unless we have national and global coverage built in 3G Wireless Systems, Pure 3G operators will not survive.
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