This column first appeared in Business & Finance magazine, 23 February 2007.

TO 3G OR NOT TO 3G, THAT IS THE QUESTION
Richard Delevan

During the week of Valentine’s Day, thousands of technophiles converged on Barcelona for 3GSM, the mobile technology trade show, to seek their true heart’s desire - a way to make money from our seemingly insatiable hunger to be connected. The show was buzzing with all sorts of cryptic acronyms that could have been enigmatic messages of romance on little candy hearts - GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, DVB-H.
Most of us frankly couldn’t be bothered with trying to decode all of the messages, because we simply want to know whether what we’re getting will actually work. When mobile technology companies remember this fact, the results can be spectacular - hence that email on the move device so addictive it is known as a Crackberry by its users with a love/hate relationship. When mobile technology companies forget that, the results can be a lot of froth on the technology pages followed by consumer confusion and ultimately disappointment - hence the unrequited love some years ago with a little thing called WAP.
Now the mobile companies are getting a bit nervous, having invested billions in first buying licenses for 3G networks in a move The Economist called perhaps the biggest bet in business history, then spent a similar figure again in constructing networks in order to deliver what in essence was promised to be a mobile broadband service.
In Ireland and across Europe, 3G services have been rolled out but with little success in finding something so wildly popular that it could become as addictive - and thus profitable - as text messaging or the Blackberry.
So far, however, there hasn’t been anywhere near the take-up of 3G services that the operators were hoping for.
Part of it is down to the fact that the experience of using the internet over a 3G handset is somewhat limited to what the operator wants you to see - a ‘walled garden’ approach that has a mixed record in the past. It will never be in the interest of a company that makes money by charging you for individual phone calls to allow you to access a service like Skype, the voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) service that allows users to have voice and video calls at low or no cost. The best hope for mobile network operators is that the mobile phone will become the preferred device for downloading and listening to music — a notion that has hearts aflutter in the music industry as well, as they look for a way out of their increasingly dysfunctional relationship with Apple’s iTunes.
But all of that may prove illusory if an altogether different technology, WiMax, takes hold. It has the potential, theoretically anyway, to dash the hopes of the traditional mobile network operators, by offering better and cheaper broadband on the move.
The best-performing 3G networks can deliver download speeds of around 7Mbps at present. WiMax, in the lab, can offer speeds of up to 70Mbps - but in the real world probably twice the best speeds that will be possible for 3G. Leaving aside the technical details, the bottom line is that WiMax may be able to offer significantly better performance. Which, if you are trying to send a PowerPoint presentation quickly while on the move or use a mobile version of MySpace or Second Life, will make a difference.
WiMax, developed by Intel, also has the advantage of being cheaper for device manufacturers to use in their products.
One way to keep tabs on how the WiMax versus 3G battle is playing out in the real world is to see whether more and more products start incorporating the technology. Nokia, RIM (which makes Blackberry) and Palm are under tremendous pressure from their traditional network partners - who also are their biggest distributors - to stick with 3G. Most likely you will see some of them make the argument that the two technologies complement one another, and see devices that offer both.
But the real test will be where some of the big names put their money.
Here in Ireland at the time of writing Eircom is still mulling whether or not to purchase the 3G license that was left on the table when it was taken off troubled Smart Telecom after a protracted court battle. Eircom may decide it isn’t worth the investment to buy the license and build a network for it. It may opt to buy time on someone else’s network or even to buy Irish Broadband, the NTR-owned unit that has already rolled out part of an early version WiMax network. An Irish company snubbing a 3G license wouldn’t make worldwide headlines but it would give credence to those who question whether the industry got it wrong, again, with such a big investment on 3G.
Later this year we could find out if an even more important market-maker, Apple, will wade into this debate. When it launched its prototype iPhone device earlier this year some commentators noticed that there were no plans to make a version that would run on a 3G network. If by the time Apple ships iPhones to Europe they are set to include WiMax, you’ll know that it’s true love.

Richard Delevan is the business editor of the Sunday Tribune. rdelevan@tribune.ie