3G Network: The Future is Bright, the Future is Hello Kitty.
Slashdot has a piece here.
The problem I see about 3G is that, it is not a disruptive technology, yet what we have right now (2G or 2.5G) are more than adequate. Bearing that in mind, all the 3G opeartors are talking about grabbing more money from their subscribers. I am paying HK$200 to HK$300 a month, and I am a fairly heavy voice user, totaling about 800 to 1200 minutes a month on average. Hutchison/Orange has been talking about HK$500/month for a typical 3G user. Unless there are really overwhelming reasons, I don't see myself doubling my mobile phone bill anytime soon. In any case, most of the features promised by 3G are already avaiable (more or less) on present 2.5G networks.
It is entirely possible that operators are thinking that if we are paying HK$200 a month for voice, then we would want those data services, thereby doubling our monthly mobile phone bill. Unfortunately it doesn't work exactly like that. The mobile phone is a communication device. It doesn't matter what form of media be it data or voice we use, we use it to communicate. Noone will take a doubled phone bill easily.
Mobile operators talk about MMS these days, 'cos it's the big money spinner. HK$5 for a short movie clip, HK$10 for transferring photo etc. is good news for the investors and shareholders, but not so good for the users. MMS in its present form is pretty much doomed in Hong Kong.
There is a network connection problem right now. The various mobile operators are ganged up into two groups. MMS sent from an opertor in one group could not be received by a user on an operator in the other group. It's like the old SMS interconnection problem between all the operators on the network, and everybody suffered.
Interesting movies and short clips, containing voice and images, are very difficult to make. It's a bit like DVs. A lot of people have them, but there aren't that many who do it as a hobby. Editing is hard, and the equipment for doing it used to be expensive. Much of the software for video editing were any good or particularly easy to use. The novelty of moving images wears off rather quickly. The Hong Kong people aren't a particularly expressive bunch, and that doesn't help MMS to become popular.
For the small amount of data going thru the network, MMS is far too expensive. The operators may see a tiny spike in its usage, but the novelty will wear off rather quickly.
One of the comments on Slashdot is very interesting.
8:34:40 AM 
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