Earlier, the country’s leading mobile phone companies, Smart and Globe, have announced the results of tests designed to exhibit their 3G systems and capabilities. As expected, the mobile operators received their 3G licenses from the NTC after passing the selection process with flying colors.

More Than Videoconferencing

Mobile telephony based on 3G technology is capable of transmitting voice data during normal phone calls and non-voice data, such as e-mail, photos, and videos. While GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) can also do some of these tasks, it would be like comparing a garden hose to an MWSS main pipe. For while GSM can accommodate between 9.6 to 14.4Kbit per second of data, a fully grown 3G network can handle up to 2Mbps.

To illustrate, downloading a three-minute MP3 song via a 2G network would take from 31 to 41 minutes. In contrast, the same file would take from 11 seconds to 1.5 minutes to download in a 3G environment.

Third-generation mobile phone technology brings a host of advanced features to mobile handsets and the networks that support them. Almost all marketing thrusts by 3G service providers highlight 3G technology’s videoconferencing capability, which enables subscribers to see the other party (or parties during conference calls).

3G mobile telephony, however, is more than videoconferencing. In fact, the Japanese experience with 3G rollout indicates that video-enhanced mobile telephony is not the killer application that 3G network executives hoped it would be.

Web Marries the Mobile Phone

Advocates of 3G technology assert that third-generation networks will combine the best that mobile telephony and the Internet can offer. 3G networks mean always-on, wireless connection to the World Wide Web. As such, 3G will bring about new ways to communicate, access information, and do business. Even how people indulge in pleasure and entertainment.

Developed to satisfy the International Telecommunications Union’s IMT-2000 agenda, 3G offers mobile phone users up to 2Mbits per second data rate, and broadband data transmission that can handle video and multimedia files. Moreover, the enhanced roaming features of 3G-enabled phones offer greater mobility to subscribers.

Smart and Globe, the two biggest fishes in the local GSM pond, are understandably eager to extend their hold into the 3G mobile phone services market. After receiving their licenses to build and operate 3G mobile phone networks, these companies, and at least a couple of other 3G wannabes, plan to bring third-generation mobile telephony to this country. And introduce the texting-crazy Pinoy mobile phone consumers to the joys and intricacies of 3G.

Lessons Learned From 3G Pioneers

Local players must be thanking their lucky stars grateful that the 3G wave did not hit the country as early as it did the markets in Europe and the more advanced countries in Asia, such as South Korea and Japan. In Europe, for example, several telecommunications groups and their investors lost billions in dollars while jostling for 3G licenses in government-sponsored auctions. Dotcom-like hysteria and operators’ willingness to pay exorbitant licensing fees drove 3G startup costs to stratospheric levels. Subscribers, however, were not embracing 3G services as fast as industry leaders hoped they would.

For a while there, missteps in 3G implementations burned a lot of operators. Most telecommunications companies, however, were able to weather and learn from these miscues. Today a long list of countries—from Argentina to Vietnam—have deployed or are in the process of deploying 3G (Wide-band Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA-2000, or Time-division synchronous Code-Division Multiple Access).

Market for 3G

It is not hard to imagine the local players’ marketing departments moving as fast as, if not faster than their engineering teams who are installing 3G systems, to craft and come up with strategies that would encourage subscribers to ditch their well-loved and trusted GSM phones and go 3G. But would 3G mobile telephony find enough takers in the country? Would consumers be willing to pay for more pricey (initially, at least) 3G services and handsets?

Bigger and more tech-enabled companies with money to spare might be among the first converts. Subscribers from the elite and upper- and middle-middle classes presumably would not be far behind. The rest of us who after almost a decade of GSM bliss are still holding on to our 3210s and 3115s will have to wait for more affordable rates. And for 3G features and benefits to trickle down our way like those of GSM did.