Finland’s Sonera has said it may not have any handsets available to launch 3G services.
Finland’s Sonera has to start providing commercial 3G services by January 1, 2002, as part of its license terms. However, the company today announced that while it expects its network to be ready by the deadline, it might not have any phones available for consumers to use.
The news comes in the same week as Manx Telecom, the BT subsidiary that was scheduled to launch the world’s first 3G network, postponed its launch to the end of the summer due to difficulties integrating handsets with its network.
It’s certainly an embarrassment for the would-be trailblazers. The Finnish government deliberately gave licenses away for free so that it could be a mobile Internet pioneer, while BT and NTT DoCoMo have been locked in a PR battle over who will launch the first 3G service. All are now left looking foolish.
But the delays don’t jeopardize 3G. Most operators in major European markets never expected to launch before mid-2002, and the major problems being experienced now are with handsets. The lack of working 3G devices, both to sell and to test networks with, will certainly hit Manx, DoCoMo and the Finns, but it will be much less of a problem for major players such as Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange.
By the time these big players launch, probably in late 2002 or early 2003, networks in Japan and Finland will have been operating for some time, having solved the problems of integrating handsets and networks. And the big firms’ network infrastructure will not be radically different from that used by the earliest players.
Vodafone and its peers should benefit from the experience and difficulties of their rivals. Their launch services will be comparatively bug-free, avoiding another PR disaster like WAP over GSM. The bigger problem will be to create compelling content offerings that actually make people buy the service. 3G needs some kind of ‘killer app’ to drive uptake, and it’s not yet clear what that will be.
