With the Arrival of 3G Networks, What More Can Mobile Operators Do?

By PixSense's Paul Singh

Over the course of time, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with mobile operators who either have invested millions or are about to invest millions of dollars in the development of 3G networks. Amidst the discussions with them a question still looms in my mind: what can our 3G network subscribers do now, and where/how can we make more money from our subscribers? For example: is there something we can do with 3G besides selling a 3G-enabled Apple iPhone?

Let’s take a closer look at the following questions:

• Is 3G everywhere?
• What Is 3G anyway?
• What are the most commonly mentioned applications of 3G?
• Which 3G applications can mobile operators deploy today?
• Is 3G everywhere?

There has been a lot of talk about 3G investments in Europe and the United States, which inevitably has resulted in a near-ubiquitous 3G adoption. As I was researching for this blog, I stumbled across the fact that China Unicom announced it plans to spend $14.5 billion on a 3G network infrastructure. According to other articles, India appears to be prepping for 3G wireless broadband, with the government all set to start selling 3G licenses. In Asia, SingTel led the way as the first to deploy 3G in 2005, and the CDMA Development Group (CDG) announced that as of the first quarter 2008, Indonesia had more than 16.3 million CDMA2000/3G subscribers — putting them in the lead in Southeast Asia for 3G CDMA subscriber growth. So, the bottom line is that 3G is a solid presence in most of the developed world and will be available in all emerging countries within the next couple of years.

What is 3G anyway?

3G is the third-generation of mobile phone standards and technology, superseding 2G, and preceding 4G. 3G is based on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) family of standards, under the International Mobile Telecommunications program, IMT-2000. It includes HSPA data transmission capabilities, which can deliver speeds of up to 14.4mbps on the downlink and 5.8mbps on the uplink. It is based on CDMA technology, which is dominated by Qualcomm.

What are the most commonly mentioned applications of 3G?

In this blog, I’d like to focus on 3G applications built for mobile phones only — and not standard computer applications. Here is a list of the most common application categories for 3G:

• Mobile Internet access
• Digital TV broadcasting
• Mobile commerce
• Location-based services
• Interactive gaming
• User-generated content (UGC) management

Certainly, mobile Internet access becomes a reality with higher speeds, just as many applications came to light when broadband access was brought to PCs. Therefore, it was no surprise that the 3G iPhone dominated any and all searches of 3G applications on the Web since its Web experience far superseded that of any other phone. The next three applications are neither a direct result nor an obvious outcome of the 3G infrastructure, so they can’t be deployed readily without major infrastructure investments.

Which 3G applications can mobile operators deploy today?

Much has been written about mobile Internet access and interactive gaming. So instead, I will focus on UGC management applications — another application type that can be deployed today and doesn’t seem to get enough attention from the media (though many analysts including Jupiter Research have done excellent research on the this market’s potential). Many of you are wondering what this UGC market is — and as soon as I start naming the businesses that fall under this category, every one of you will agree you are an avid consumer of this market and contribute significantly in terms of content, advertisement eyeballs and other various forms of purchase. Yes, I’m talking about the first wave of the UGC marketplace in the form of media sites, including Flickr, PhotoBucket, Snapfish, Shutterfly and YouTube. Then the wave of social networking sites came crashing in, including Facebook, Friendster, Hi5 and MySpace, just to name a few.

Now that you realize the potential of the UGC market, think of the pain and complexity users experience when posting content with a mish-mash of USB/FireWire cables connecting a device to their PC, ensuring a broadband connection is secured, and then having to manually input the location of their media (if needed). In contrast, let’s look at the 3G phone: a continuous broadband connection, equipped with a 2+ mega-pixel photo/video camera, all your contacts (friends and family) always at your fingertips, AND, with many phones, even location-tagging is enabled through GPS or cell tower identification. Hopefully you now see the potential — as a 3G mobile operator — a new ability to initiate, cater to, and develop existing and new mobile user-generated content communities. The categories of applications are both similar to, yet different from, what has been enabled through broadband Internet on PCs. The various applications can be thought of as catering to three functions mobile subscribers want to do with their media:

• Preservation/archiving of users’ media, including contacts, pictures, videos, ringtones, SMS and music
• Sharing of users’ media both on a one-to-one basis as well as one-to-many basis giving rise to many new services, including mobile greeting cards and video SMS, to name a few
• Publishing of users’ media on social networking sites or public forums or creation of a social networking site itself

These three functions are only the beginning. The next step for mobile operators will be delving more deeply into these applications to ensure their networks do not suffer some of the issues and challenges that have plagued the UGC market in the past. There are many opportunities for carriers to deploy and monetize mobile UGC services, and I hope this blog has provided some semblance of guidance to get you started.

R. Paul Singh has more than 20 years of experience in general management, marketing and business development in the communications industry. He founded ipVerse/Veraz, which develops and manufactures VoIP switches for telecom service providers worldwide. He served in several management roles at ipVerse/Veraz over nine years, from CEO to vice president to general manager. Before founding ipVerse, Singh held executive positions, including CEO and co-founder of Internetware, an Internet security company later acquired by Quarterdeck; president of Launch Marketing, where he worked with Ascend, Netopia and Sun Microsystems on product strategy and launch plans; and director of marketing for Telebit, a pioneer of remote access technology later acquired by Cisco Systems. Singh also worked at Sun Microsystems on projects involving integration of voice and data networking, and with 3Com in various product management and strategic marketing roles. He has co-authored three books on Internet-related topics, published by New Riders Publishing.

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines