Cingular announced yesterday that it will roll out commercial UMTS services across their nationwide footprint next year. The company said it will make service available starting in Q4 2005 and finish the rollout in 2006. Cingular added that its main handset suppliers, Nokia, Motorola and LG have committed to provide enough devices to support the launch. Cingular already provides UMTS service in six cities via the ATT acquisition; the company said the combination of the two carriers provided enough spectrum to support a nationwide UMTS launch.
The basic problems with UMTS remain: handset battery life is dismal, the handsets are large and heavy (compared to devices for 2G nteworks) and end users have not found the new services compelling in current UMTS markets. Incremental improvements will be made on the first two problems between now and Cingular’s launch, but I doubt much progress will be made on the third.
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