UKNM: Re: UKNM Digest V1 #603

[Tom Hume]

At 12:43 18/08/2000 +0100, UKNM Digest wrote:

>He nailed WAP but not M-commerce in general?  IMHO WAP is a con-job.


Why? It's a version 1.0 (oh alright - 1.1) technology but it's still the

only standard solution for interactive mobile data services in the UK.


>They designed it, paid for it and now they have to sell it.


Hmm. Exactly like every other commercial technology ever.


>   We could have

>I-mode, where the phone is hooked up the whole time for free.


I-mode is not free.


>   And colour


I-mode is not intrinsically colour. Some I-mode phones support colour.


>but you need to stall these things to make money.  Look at the idea that in

>Japan it can be done but here no.  Not yet.  We are being spoon fed the

>technology and we are almost two years behind.  More people use M-commerce

>in Japan than land lines to surf the net(phone calls to the internet cost a

>lot more there).


Although cable modems with decent bandwidth are available. I-mode is not a

replacement for web access.


>http://www.japon.net/imode/ If you want to see where we will be in a year

or

>two.


I doubt it, unless either


(a) NTT DoCoMo manage to roll out a packet-switched network across the UK

and sell a few million new phones to subscribers who didn't know they

wanted them without any of the other operators noticing, or


(b) UK operators manage to upgrade their networks quickly, sign up decent

content providers, and push new handsets out to consumers more effectively

than they have ever done in the past.


I can't see either of these happening, tho IMHO (b) is more likely. I think

the most probable outcome is


(c) Wireless services remain with quite a small (but growing) audience for

the next 6-12 months, but gradually are sold into the youth market - who

snap them up like they did SMS and corporate users. As bandwidth increases

and handset interfaces improve, wireless data gradually becomes a more

realistic propostion for consumers (as opposed to people who like it 'cos

it's neat, or need it for their business) and we see it go mass market.


I-mode is not a realistic proposition for the UK in the near future.

Services similar to I-mode may well appear over the next 1-2 years but

won't reach the audience they have in Japan for a while.


>As far as I know network theory the maximum bandwidths that can be obtained

>through different media; Optical, copper and Microwave. Microwave wins

hands

>down.  It can handle 10 times that of a large bundle of fiber optical

cable.


Do you have any references for these figures? Is that an industry standard,

"large bundle"?


What do microwaves have to do with m-commerce? All current phones, and

future ones at least as far as 3G/UMTS use radio, not microwaves.


>   Personally I can not wait to unlock myself

>from this desk and do some work in a park.


Don't need 3G for that - I'm sitting in a sunny Brighton garden typing this

thanks to http://www.apple.com/airport/ ;)


Cheers

Tom



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