Telco industry will start to see a pacman phenomenon within the next few years according to David W. Dorman, CEO and Chariman of AT&T. Today there is too many competitors and less powder for the required improvements.
This is one of the first news I have found that a Telco operator has scrapped their plans for Wi-Fi. M1 of Singapore is betting for 3G instead. What makes this interesting is the fact that Singapore ain't that big at all. One could imagine that it would be relatively easily to cover the whole country with Wi-Fi.
The biggest case I have heard of is a town of 30.000 inhabitants covered by a single WLAN network of 50 base stations. The roaming should work seamless even while driving (at least according to city speed limits). The company is called Radionet and it has been founded by ex-Nokia people who are experts in radio technologies.
Hutchison has started a price war by slashing voice prices almost 70% with their newly launched 3G network in UK. They are selling some 600 handsets a day. However the familiar suppliers like Nokia will start to ship their 3G phones only in the end of the year.
More supporting signals for RFID technology: this time it's Wal-Mart. It is estimated that they could save $1-2bn by replacing the good old bar codes. There has been even considerations to include a RFID tag for each Euro note and this seems to be more than just talk.
Posted at June 11, 2003 08:05 AM