Technical hitches slow down GPRS

The UK's general packet radio service (GPRS) will suffer technical problems until at least the end of the year, analysts have warned.

The four biggest networks have all announced plans for GPRS - a halfway house before the launch of the much-hyped third-generation phones.

Bu users may be disappointed in the service's speed, claims Ben Donnelly, a mobile analyst at researcher Frost & Sullivan.

Manufacturers claim that GPRS will provide data speeds of up to 115Kbps, but networks are struggling to offer speeds above 40Kbps, he explained.

"They won't have anything like the speeds expected. It won't be anything like 56Kbps, more like 12Kbps. Optimisation [of data speeds] has to happen before we can get decent commercial operations," said Donnelly.

"Operators have to learn that these packet networks are different [to circuit-switched networks] and how to speed up the network," said Ali Pourtatheri, chief executive of Ubinetics, which tests the interoperability of GPRS devices.

Customers will be able to judge for themselves this year:

• BT Cellnet's commercial operation has been available since July last year. It claims speeds of up to 30Kbps, but has attracted only a few hundred users
• Vodafone will launch its service next month
• Orange plans to launch GPRS, with speeds of 30-40Kbps, in the second quarter of this year
• One2One has yet to set a date, but will launch UK services in the latter half of this year, "if at all".

"Handsets will be available in greater numbers by May of this year," said Andy Cheer, head of wireless practice at consultancy Intercai Mondiale.

But Donnelly said: "There is a risk that we will have a vicious circle consisting of handsets with no optimised network on which they can run."

First published in Computing