Linked by David Adams on Wed 25th Sep 2002 15:53 UTC
The information that I could find on the web about Sprint's new '3G' high-speed data service was a little short on solid information, so I spoke with Kevin Packingham, Senior Manager of Business Marketing for SprintPCS' new Vision service. I sought him out because Ubiquitous, affordable high speed wireless data services are something of a holy grail for tech-savvy road warriors like myself, so I received each morsel of information about Sprint's new service with great interest. Mr. Packingham spoke over the phone and he clarified many of the questions that I had about the new service.
Permalink for comment
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
"In general one can easily say Japan is very far ahead with regard to mobile communications compared to western countries."
No doubt that in regards to implementation, japan is ahead but not in technology.
If you look at the companies that are moving wireless tech forward like arraycomm, navini, flarion, e-tenna,Ashvatha semiconductor, Iospan Wireless, etc, most are start ups and most are in the US.
W-CDMA, which FOMA uses, for that matter is a incremental step forward from CDMA IS-95/2000. The industry needs a lot better price/performance.
The other issue is just the different life style in japan. Things like longer commutes, greater use of public transportation and still low, formerly lower, use of the wired internet are factors. For a lot of japanese (roughly 1/3 of users by some estimates) imode was their first experience of the web.
My question is what happens to imode as japanese become more accustomed to the real web on larger screens. If they are really outside of their house as much as people claim then maybe not much. I guess we'll see.