Subject: RE: Sats vs plain UMTS

From: "Shaw, Robert" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 11:45:38 +0200

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Musandu [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2000 8:59 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Sats vs plain UMTS
> 
> 
> Could hand held satelitte phones kill UMTS even before it 
> takes root, as the key tools for personal high bandwidth 
> internet access?
> 
> Yours truly,
> Nyagudi Musandu

Extremely unlikely. First, satellite phone systems support 
only low-bitrate data (9.6 kbps). There are planned larger 
bandwidth systems (e.g., Teledesic) but the sat-phone 
business is quite fuzzy following the collapse of Iridium, 
ICO's problems, and constant market repositioning in the
LEOS/MEOS space in which only Globalstar is flying...

Terrestial wireless systems (market leader is now GSM with 
~260 million subscribers and a wide geographical footprint 
except in the Americas) have a huge head start and will very 
likely continue to dominate the market. UMTS is one part of 
the ITU's IMT-2000 family of 3G systems with a limited set 
of radio interfaces (see www.itu.int/imt/ or perhaps 
www.gsmworld.com).

TDMA-based 2.5G systems using GPRS (and perhaps EDGE) will 
clearly be an important mobile data transition platform to 
3G systems (supporting up to 2 Mbps). 3G systems based on 
WCDMA will probably be deployed first in Japan in early 2001. 
One of the first movers will be NTT Docomo: their year-old 
"i-mode" mobile data service, although low-bandwidth, has 
demonstrated the potential market with already around 6 
million subscribers. On that basis, NTT Docomo is now the 
largest ISP in Japan and has over 8,000 i-mode content providers. 
Elsewhere, the bet is on WAP (www.wapforum.com) but expect to 
see much convergence between WAP and "i-mode" (actually a 
simplified HTML) in the next year. 

Bob