The 3G wireless networks have not even been turned on a world wide basis, the profits in wide area networks is still a chimera, but that does not stop the mobile carriers and equipment makers to come up with a new wireless standard. The so called super 3G is going to be ten times faster than current 3G services. More content, more stuff on the handset….. blah blah blah! Believe it when you see it, but meanwhile NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Cingular, Siemens and Alcatel, are going to work on this “super 3G”. The first stage of development will be 2007, though no time line for commerical launch. NTT will spend nearly a billion dollars on this stuff. Question: why aren’t Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Qualcomm and TI on the list? (Read BBC report.)
The service providers are figuring out that the hardware guys have to eat their lunch (a la Club Nokia) in order to stay in business. The lesson they haven’t learned is that open-source dynamics (via slashdot) are what creates service businesses that are not dependent on vendors.