Consumer 3G revenue vital to operators' future success

Growing consumer revenue from new 3G services will be vital for telecoms suppliers to maintain sales and develop business opportunities, said experts at the 3GSM World Congress.

Speakers at the annual conference told delegates there is more to do to simplify and build on existing capabilities and extend 3G products with compelling consumer-focused services.

'The technology is evolving at a rate that is faster than we can deploy it,' said Joe Ziskin, IBM global vice president of telecoms. 'The industry needs to wait and understand each technology as it evolves.'

Video-calling is an example of a service adopted by subscribers for different reasons from those anticipated by suppliers, says Bob Fuller, chief executive of 3, the first mobile operator to offer a 3G service in the UK.

He says 3G video services only became popular as consumers realised they could share self-made content with friends. 'We realised they were creating content that helps them in their interactions,' said Fuller. 'It allows them to share beyond voice and texting.'

Fuller believes other UK operators will fail to capitalise on this opportunity.

'By cautiously adding 3G to existing 2.5G packages, they are making problems for themselves, getting the worst of both worlds,' he said.

Network operators and service providers should remove complexity from their infrastructure to deploy new 3G services such as video-calling more quickly in response to subscriber demand.

'The problem with introducing new services is heavy integration with some very old legacy systems,' said Andrew Steven, solution sales director at Microsoft.