Consumers dreaming of exotic third-generation (3G) services
delivered to their mobile phones may have to put such thoughts on
hold.
Telecommunication companies and equipment vendors have over-hyped
the capabilities of 3G mobile technology and need to readjust
market expectations as roll-out plans for 3G networks slow down,
according to the Intel president and chief executive officer Craig
Barrett.
While consumers have been led to expect the imminent availability
of high-end 3G services, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), and
not 3G, will be the next generation of widely deployed mobile
technology, Barrett said earlier in the week.
GPRS is an upgrade to Global System for Mobile Communications
networks. It currently allows an increase in data-transmission
speeds from 9.6Kbps to around 40Kbps, and eventually is expected to
offer speeds above 100Kbps. By comparison, 3G is ultimately
expected to offer wireless data transfer rates of up to
2Mbps.
Barrett believes GPRS will be widely deployed before 3G technology
in the short term. However, GPRS is non-existent in Japan, one of
the world's largest wireless services markets, and is several years
away from widespread roll-out across the US, another major market.
There is some evidence that Barrett's prediction could come true.
In South Korea, for example, the country's major carriers have
delayed deployment of 3G networks, favouring instead the use of
GPRS-like fast packet data services on existing 2G networks.
With GPRS expected to be closer than 3G to reaching the average
consumer's handset in many markets, Intel is working on
technologies that take advantage of the bandwidth increase that is
offered by GPRS networks.
During Barrett's speech, an Intel executive demonstrated the
capabilities of GPRS technology by showing a video stream on a
wireless handheld device running Microsoft's Windows CE 3.0
operating system and based on Intel's Personal Internet Client
Architecture. Acknowledging that the postage stamp-sized video was
small, the executive said Intel was satisfied with the quality of
the video stream given the bandwidth and technical limitations of
GPRS networks.
In the future, those limitations will increasingly disappear as
technology evolves, according to Barrett, who predicted that
eventually there would be no difference between wired access to the
Internet and wireless access in terms of the services and
information available. At the same time, the line is blurring
between mobile phones and personal digital assistants, with the two
types of device already beginning to merge in some applications, he
said.