3G or not 3G, that is a very good question.

Converse

3G may not be the word on everybody's lips at the moment, but if you believe the hype the mobile phone giants are telling us, you'd expect it to be soon.

Or at least that's what communications giants want us to think. For those who haven't heard about the "amazing" 3G standard yet, then here's a little bit of info to bring you up to speed.

I'm sure most of us have seen or at least heard about WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) enabled phones, these are simply digital mobile phones with a kind of enhanced SMS data transfer ability. This means that rather than receiving short text messages, you can now receive text versions of websites thanks to WAP's ability to read data faster than normal SMS. Of course, this is only of any use if the website your visiting was produced with WAP phones in mind. Now although WAP phones are slightly gaining in popularity, they still aren't very common. There are several reasons for this, one their being unavailable at this time on the popular "pay as you go" tariffs, and the other reason could be this:

Who in Gods name wants to read little chunks of text from such a tiny screen when they can view the web in all its glory on a PC or set top box?

Now it's fair to say that business people on the go may need to check out share prices or send short mails to various places, fair enough, WAP comes in handy here.

The downside to this is that not everybody in the country is a businessman on the go (or business woman for that matter) and other than the novelty of being able to access the internet on a mobile handset, there is really not much genuine use for these WAP phones.

Step forward 3G. 3G is kind of like a super WAP, in its being far far faster than WAP or indeed SMS. 3G requires a special network to be setup by the big mobile telco's, you may have heard last year about the UK Government "obtaining" 20 billion from the sale of 3G broadcasting licenses via the big boys such as Vodafone, Orange, NTL etc.

The aforementioned communications giants were so convinced last year of 3G being the dawn of a new era in mobile technology that they were prepared to pay this huge sum.

What they didn't count on was the rapidly falling price of mobile phone calls and mobile net access, due to such fierce competition. Another major problem the telco giants have just realised is that 3G network itself may not be able to handle the amount of traffic expected from users of these new phones. If this sounds a bit unbelievable, just take a look at the past 2 years' Christmas and new year, something as simple as handling text messages brought down ALL the major networks due to the high volume of messages being sent.

3G is capable of surfing the net 'properly', displaying real time video to each user and lots more, so am I not the only one who sees a big problem coming here?

Obviously I'm not, because both Orange and Vodafone have recently admitted to be expecting 'overcapacity' problems even with lower than expected users, due to 'overestimating' the 3G networks ability. This together with a knock-on effect from the slowdown in the U.S economy has meant shares in the big companies such as Nokia, Samsung and Orange have dropped significantly. The telco's believed they would be awash with cash over forseeable future, but the tide is turning already for the mobile giants and merges and collapses are expected over the next few years. This is very bad news for 3G, but to coin a phrase; to kick them while they're down, poll's with potential customers has shown that the vast majority of mobile phone users are more than happy with their current digital cellphones and don't see any real point in buying 3G phones, as mentioned earlier, this is proving the case with WAP phones too.

My personal view is that 3G will take off eventually, just a lot slower than expected and that phone call prices will drop dramatically over the next year or two, possibly even to match charges of BT and NTL landlines. I think we are talking over the next 3-5 years for 3G, or maybe even a rival more cost effective technology stomping over 3G?

So these boasts from the mobile phone giants about the death of the clunky PC may be a bit premature at the moment, their new 3G networks may fall over before the PC does.

Converse/#a51