Subject: [NEXTEL-1] U.S. carriers pick up the 3G pace

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 13:20:32 -0500

U.S. carriers pick up the 3G pace
Last modified: March 21, 2004, 9:00 PM PST
By Ben Charny
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

U.S. cellular carriers, which lag way behind European and Asian
counterparts in offering wireless broadband, are set to unveil several
initiatives on Monday to help them catch up with overseas companies.

AT&T Wireless, under pressure from an arrangement with part-owner NTT
DoCoMo to introduce wireless broadband in four U.S.  cities, is expected
to announce at the CTIA Wireless 2004 show that Motorola, NEC and Nokia
will supply it with camera phones for those third-generation, or "3G,"
wireless networks by year's end. That's a major step toward offering
services like video streaming in the cities in question, which are
likely to be San Francisco, Seattle and two other markets, executives
noted.

Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. cellular carrier, plans to make
several announcements about BroadbandAccess, its wireless broadband
service, at the conference. Vendors of equipment for cell phone networks
expect that Verizon will say which company it wants to supply gear to
expand the service, which is undergoing trials in Washington, D.C., and
San Diego.

In addition, Nextel Communications is expected to unveil more details
about a wireless broadband service trial it is conducting in North
Carolina. The trial uses technology from Flarion Technologies that is
capable of ferrying wireless data at 1.5 megabits per second, compared
with Nextel network's current rate of about 20 kilobits per second.

"We're looking at this because it's fast, disruptive and efficient,"
Nextel CEO Tim Donahue said recently.
After five years of famously slow progress, 3G networks that use
standards with cumbersome names such as UMTS or W-CDMA are now available
throughout the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Japan and Korea.
Carriers such as T-Mobile and 3 in Europe, and NTT DoCoMo in Japan, are
using the technology, which operates 50 times faster than present-day
cell phone networks. They use it to boost network capacity, to improve
coverage areas, and to offer new services such as 2.4-megabit-per-second
wireless broadband.

But carriers in the United States have lagged behind, mainly because
their attention has strayed to more pressing issues, such as the
November 2003 deadline to let cellular subscribers keep their telephone
numbers when switching carriers. The slow economy also didn't help,
according to Steve Largent, the chief executive of the Cellular
Telecommunications & Internet Association, a lobbying group for the cell
phone industry.
\

"It's been a slow rollout in the United States," he said. "It's been
difficult to show a sustainable business model for that amount of
capital investment."

Carriers have their eye on the 3G prize because, as a whole, they're
counting on future sales of data-oriented services to make up for
plunging revenue from voice calls. Once faster networks are in place,
carriers can initiate their plans to sell broadband in areas overlooked
by cable or DSL providers. Analysts forecast they will bring in a few
hundred million dollars in extra revenue, once they do. The first
wireless carrier to reach 3G is the first to begin earning that revenue.

"Timing is everything in this market," said Lawrence Babbio, Verizon's
vice chairman.

Let there be music

But not all carriers' attention is on their networks.

Cingular Wireless, the No. 2 U.S. wireless provider, plans to announce
several new initiatives designed to help it absorb the 22 million
subscribers it will pick up if its plans to buy AT&T Wireless by the end
of the year are successful.
It will unveil the Cingular Service Summary, which spells out the terms
of service contracts to new customers in an easy-to-understand way. The
carrier also intends to let people find out how many minutes they have
left on a contract by pushing the star button followed by the letters
M-I-N on their phones. They can also sport scores read over the phone by
pressing B-A-L-L.

At the CTIA show, Sprint Communications will introduce phones and
services involving music and other entertainment, according to a Sprint
representative. It will also make the debut handsets with advanced audio
capabilities, plus an upgrade to its picture-mail service, which is one
of the surprising success stories of the industry in the past year.

http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-5176504.html

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