Comment: What are the goals for 3G?

There's an air of desperation about the first adverts for 3G mobile phones. True there is some promotional activity but it hardly looks like the start of the next computer revolution. Whereas expensive TV ads from mobile phone operators suggest new ways to use still pictures to project a message, 3G has had a very low-key campaign that invites punters to pre-register for Smartphone 3G handsets that do... well actually we are not quite sure what they'll do.

3G officially came to the UK on 3 March. But it came without adequate coverage to provide a wide-ranging service and without any handsets actually shipping as far as I can see. There has been an advert on the TV about how we'll be able to watch goals scored as they happen. But even assuming you are lucky enough to be standing in an area covered by a 3G mast, I venture to suggest that the sports fan may not be the obvious first adopter of this technology.

By contrast, I'm a classic early adopter of such technology, and believe me, I'm no sports fan. I had my eye on the O2 XDA handset, then decided that maybe the Orange SPV smartphone would be a better bet. Then because I heard the dull murmur of a real-live 3G launch I tried to find out more.

Sure I'm interested, but for ordinary punters there is no hope of doing what the managing director of the Hutchison group and the UK secretary of trade and industry did at the official launch and actually make a call, yet. Maybe this has something to do with the news that Hutchison, which is rolling out the first 3G service under the name 3 UK, has just made a call for an extra £1bn in funding from several sources: £650m from Hutchison Whampoa, £200m from NTT DoCoMo and £150m from KPN Mobile. It expects a response in April to this request for "next stage" funding.

Does this mean that Hutchison doesn't know whether it will get the money for the next stage? In which case, why on earth launch a service that doesn't even exist in its first stage? We're all hardened to presentations of conceptual products, but nothing is quite as absent as a phone service with no phones and a patchy network. I've found a Hutchison Web site at www.three.co.uk and am trying to learn more facts about the "service".

What is immediately apparent is that this whole revolution is viewed by the hungry phone salesmen as nothing more than the next step after picture messaging - video messaging - in fact the 3G network is referred to as a video network in a couple of places.

This seems like a complete failure of imagination by Hutchison. As IT Week has reported, in hope rather than confidence, for several years, 3G can offer much to IT departments wanting to support WLANs, and broadband wireless access to empower travelling staff and integrate computer and communications functions in a single mobile device. Yet what is being peddled is moving-picture messaging.

There is a reason. Without a complete countrywide network, this service is good for little else. A consumer may put up with a fallback service of voice calls and SMS when no 3G network is present, but corporates won't.

That's why 3G turns out to be just moving-picture messaging and why it doesn't look any better now than it did on 2 March, before 3 UK "launched".

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