by the way, you might check out this story for an update...

Sharom, I wish I knew about video phones. I think it's certainly a lovely idea for auto-blogging, and for "look what I'm looking at!" travellers' tales. But in the near future?

Well, no, can't see it. Most of the population lives in 3G areas in the UK - London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow. When we travel, we are often going to be outside home turf. So we'll want to show the folks back home the seaside at Brighton? No 3G.

And the price is, still, not encouraging...

We now have a small problem with /m7 because we have a new Web server. So if you want to read Chris Comley's article, it's now at this URL.

I’m wondering about the future usage of the video-phone calls and trying to get some related numbers. Do you believe it will be a hit in the near future? Is there a buzz word for it like we currently use for SMS? “I will SMS it”, “I will Fax it”…?

Plus ca change.. I was involved with a remote access project with a division of BT a few years back, when we were asked about what devices to support mobile data people wanted. As they couldnt supply a phone with any capabilities, their idea of the way forward was a rebadged modem, then a rebadged PCMCIA GSM card, then something to help the PDA users out. As a "Dilbert" measure, they were also interested in using a WAP interface, because it was a buzzword.
Mobile telcos are merely voice companies whose phones happen to move. We had the hugest argument with Vodafone about getting them to offer a "taster" £50 a month GPRS trial to our customers for mobile data, when its a guaranteed £50 ARPU for three months. sigh..

Well in that case my apologies to Nokia. :-)

But would you disagree with my point that the target market for the ngague is "younger" persons?

Edited by author 02-20-2004 10:10 AM
I'd agree with almost all that. The only part I wonder about is the games phone. If its the N Gage you're talking about, think again - the Bluetooth on that is truly superb - works with everything I've tried it with (including my T3) and the phone is basically a 3650 so I have loads of business applications installed too.

Overall its much underrated as a business phone, even if it looks like a Taco shell!

cheers

Richard

The video advert doesn't work, anyway. It's supposed to show that 3G gives you enough data to run video.

But ordinary people don't equate video with high data rates.

I'm sure your site recently posted a story about Vodafone Live! showing that most people thought that was 3G?

I'm of the opinion that, untill prices drop a LOT at least, its data access, not videogimickry, that will sell 3G. So I said so here...

http://www.newswireless.net/articles/040219-stupid.html

but I'd be interested to hear different, esp from anyone in the industry with actual sales figures to hand. :-)

Good point... and the roaming issue is getting to be the hot one...


I'm on holiday for two days, by the way. Wasn't quite how I planned it. But GPRS is the only connectivity I have here in Scotland, and one by one, all the other options have failed. When nature hands you lemons...

I expect that Voda will try and launch the service at a premium price, probably with tiered "per megabyte" pricing (perhaps c£1/MB?) and a top-end "all you can eat", although I suspect the small-print will probably have a cap. (1GB per month?)

It's worth putting any prices in context. To put data ONTO the Internet costs companies with websites roughly $1 per GB. To take data OFF the Internet via ADSL on normal usage costs around $10 per GB (ie perhaps 3-5GB/month total), while to take data off the Internet via GPRS costs about $1000 per GB (or even $10000 per GB if you're roaming internationally).

I think Voda is rushing the 3G data service out before WiFi is widespread & gets its own roaming sorted.

Dean Bubley
Disruptive Analysis

If they ask over fifty pounds sterling a month for "all you can eat" data, then Vodafone are going to be faced with a small market, right?

They have announced a 3G data-only service. They have not announced what the charges will be. I'm guessing, at first, they won't mind if the market is small. What's your best guess?