“We don’t have any handsets, so we can’t launch our networks.”
“Why do you need handsets? Your networks aren’t ready.”
Amid all the optimism and parties at the 3GSM World Congress lurk the two most prominent handset problems of UMTS: there are not enough available to support wide adoption, and the ones that are available aren’t very good.
The CEOs of both Vodafone and T-Mobile told a panel at the show that “we can’t turn the future on until we have [3G] handsets that are at least as good or better than [other phones] today” and “We can’t disappoint customers by introducing handsets that are inferior in features and price.” Both men echoed the seemingly ageless chant about availability, with T-Mobile’s CEO Rene Olbermann harkening the audience back to the introduction of GSM. “Twelve years later, the picture hasn’t changed a lot – we’re still waiting for handsets,” he said. Vodafone’s Arun Sarin said the devices “are bulky, they get hot and they don’t have enough battery life.”
Meanwhile, on another stage, the heads of both Nokia and Ericsson defended the progress their companies have made to produce UMTS devices. According to an article posted on EE Times, Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila said the delays were caused by immature networks and the complexity of the WCDMA standard. And Sony Ericsson has yet to ship a UMTS handset.
One supposes Mr. Ollila has already taken his network infrastructure group to task for both having helped create a complex standard and not having delivered stable infrastructure.
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