Lacklustre uptake for 3G leads to waning support from Operators
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Published:
Week 31
July 2006 -
Image Source:
CCS Insight
News:
Under pressure from shareholders Vodafone is believed to be reducing its focus on 3G. In an interview with ZDNet the operator’s UK office confirmed that "the share (of 3G) has dipped as we've rebalanced investment across our customer base… so the kind of commercial investment we were making into customers is no longer justified." This indicates a reduction in the amount of subsidy that Vodafone will be offering to subscribers to sign up on a 3G contract. The spokesperson also admitted that “video calling is not a service that is used by a lot of people” in the same interview.
This comes at the same time as Hungarian mobile operators admitted there had been poor demand for 3G (only 10,000 subscribers out of nine million have signed up to date) and Vodafone’s Czech unit announced it was suspending plans to introduce 3G citing “high costs” and lack of customer interest.
In a related development Ofcom (the regulator in the UK) published a document about 3G Rollout obligations (see:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/3g_rollout/3g_consultation.pdf)
which included some interesting responses from some UK’s 3G licensees.
