Thailand has no need to rush into 3G mobile, argues Gartner analyst
DON SAMBANDARAKSA
 |
| Third generation (3G) mobile phones on offer at a road show in Singapore. Here in Thailand 3G should be sorted out within the next couple of years. — AFP |
Licensing and regulatory issues for 3G in Thailand should be sorted out within the next couple of years, but the real disruptive force that will sweep across the Thai telecommunications industry is not 3G or any other technology, but rather innovative new Google-like business models and convergence, according to Gartner vice president for research Nick Ingelbrecht.
Ingelbrecht said that over the last 10 years, Thailand has enjoyed a very high level of mobile phone penetration, especially in the context of prevailing income levels. Even the ITU has spoken of Thailand as being a showcase of how consumers leapfrogged the fixed line and went straight to mobile.
This is despite the regulatory uncertainty that prevails today. However, he pointed out that the telecom industry, not just in Thailand, is intensely political and the regulation framework is simply a product of the political and cultural environment. And there are a few old scores to settle between the government and the various vested interests, both foreign and local, he added.
So how does that affect our roadmap to 3G? Ingelbrecht suggests that perhaps Thailand does not need a 3G network yet and that waiting for more mature and affordable technology might not be a bad idea.
"What are you hoping to deliver on 3G that you can't already have on 2G? If you look at True's Q3 results, you will see that fully 50 percent of their non-voice revenue is from the caller ringback tone. This is absolutely nothing to do with high-speed data," he pointed out.
If anything, Gartner figures suggest that the demand for data services in Thailand is very low compared to other markets and the bulk of non-voice revenue is from ringback tones, ringtones and SMS.
Mobile data is still very much a niche market for nomadic business users.
This may be a blessing. The price performance of 3G networks has increased a lot since 2001, and the number of 3G capable handsets today is much greater and prices are falling.
The same logic applies to markets like China, which will only be pushing out 3G this year.
Rather than a real consumer-driven rush to 3G, what we are seeing today across the world is a "land grab" by incumbents to reserve spectrum, which has the added benefit of making sure nobody else enters the market.
"One point that is often overlooked is the fact that a pure 3G network is cheaper to operate and maintain than a 2G network. On a dollar per bit per hertz, a fully loaded 3G network is cheaper at providing voice," he said.
What no operator wants, and what many early movers have ended up with, is two separate networks to operate and expensively maintain.
Rather than phase in 3G, perhaps it would be better to wait until the majority of handsets are 3G ready and switch to 3G. Only this year will we see low-end 3G handsets in the market.
In 18 months, Ingelbrecht says Thailand will have a big population of 3G phones and then the industry will have a much bigger incentive to switch.
As for other technologies, Gartner does not see 802.16 Wimax as competing with 3G any time soon.
"Today, Samsung has some first generation mobile WiMax terminals, but these are very early days. Nobody has really solved the issues of battery life and processing power that need to be worked through," he added.
Rather, we will see WiMax in PCs and even desktops as an alternative for broadband, especially in the rural areas of Thailand.
"This side of 2010, you are talking about a very niche market in terms of mobile WiMax take-up," he said.
"3G itself is still evolving. Today we have HSDPA and HSUPA, plus there is this huge industry behind 3G. On the other hand, support for WiMax is very ambivalent with each company having a different vision. Only Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent see WiMax as a near-term business opportunity as they have some IP they believe they can leverage," he said.
So what is the next big thing? Voice over IP? Ingelbrecht thinks that rather than supplant cellular, VoIP is already starting to become an added service that many telecom operators offer their customers as an option.
"We're already seeing some mobile carriers offer VoIP as an add-on service. It becomes part of the feature set. It's not disruptive," he said. Rather, he expects that we will see innovation in business models and the rise of user-generated content as a big driver for the telecommunications industry in the future.
Already Google has been talking about mobile services being offered for free in exchange for people accepting a certain amount of advertising in the handset in exchange for voice services.
In this area, Ingelbrecht said that True was already leading the world with its converged services. People want to access their services, mobile and fixed-line, seamlessly. They want to download their music, listen to that music on their mobile, put it on their PC, upload it to their iPod and use it as their needs require rather than as the network requires, he said, adding that he expects other mobile operators to follow True's lead towards convergence in the near future.
Prev
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Next
