They are, I suspect, going to be able to get out of a lot of that money. It's tied to all sorts of things which aren't going to happen, and renegotiation is a big political deal, right now.

The funny part is, it's going to delay the development of Flash-OFDM because the Flarion solution is actually so good (IMHO!) that it will bail the European Governments out of refunds, if they let the operators switch to that instead of WCDMA. So the operators aren't going to make it easy for them by agreeing right away. Foot dragging noises will be heard!

Methinks this may not be unrelated to the exorbitant sums Orange (and all the rest, except Virgin) are committed to pay out for 3G licences. When I worked for them we were bombarded with highly-selective news on what a massive success 3G would be - how the technology was working well in Japan (oddly enough, they overlooked mentioning that subscriptions ran to barely 10% of break-even levels) My prediction was (cynic that I am) doom and gloom. Orange is about the only France Telecom subsidiary that makes any money - and the levels of money it's made in the past will henceforth largely be handed to Gordon Brown as license fees. Now they're scrabbling for a way to increase revenue. Am I alone in joining the dots? Or in remembering what "Oligopoly" means?

Edited by author 09-13-2004 11:25 AM
Orange is far from being the only telco which is desperate to avoid being relegated to bit-carrier and which wants to deal in "value add."

Courting coders is the way forward; compelling content. I reckon "all you can eat" broadband will make this hard...