Re: Cellular phone networks in US, Europe and Japan - what data rates ?

Dear Mr Peppe Ragusa,

Thank you very much for your kind comments.
Do you have any idea how many subscribers pay for WAP services in Italy,
and how many of Italy's WAP subscribers use WAP every day?
I'd like to compare that number with Japan's 20 million mobile internet
subscribers.

Thank you,

Gerhard Fasol
Eurotechnology Japan K K.
http://www.eurotechnology.com/
fasol@eurotechnology.com

Peppe Ragusa wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> here is an italian view-point (I am an Italian recent-graduated in
> telecommunications engineering).
> 
> > > I wonder why the wireless interent is so popular in Japan, why in the US
> > > everybody talks about and in Europe it is not very popular but almost
> > > everybody owns a cell phone ?!?
> 
> Italy was the first european country which experienced the crossover of mobile
> phones on fixed phones, some years ago. Nowadays in Italy everybody has a cell
> phone and a lot of people thinks to unsubscribe their home phone connection.
> I went studying abroad (France) during last year, I specialized in mobile
> internet, and when I came back to Italy, it was a revolution: everywhere people
> talked about wap, operators advertisings were only on wap services, etc. It was
> shocking.
> I can tell you that in Italy, much more than in the rest of Europe, mobile
> Internet is very very popular. I work in the US (Silicon Valley) now, and I found
> that here it is not as popular as it is in Italy since at least 1 year.
> 
> > > I know that one reason in Europe are the costs. It is still a connection
> > > based charging and users pay every second they are online. In Japan I
> > > think it is a packet switched network and so the users pay for the
> > > amount of transfered data ?!
> 
> In Italy costs are very competitive. Operators are lowering prices more and more,
> and by the moment you pay almost 0.1$ per minute for a wap connection and it is
> considered as not too expensive in Italy. But maybe a traffic-based charge would
> be more appreciated.
> 
> > > In Europe you can only get 9.2 kbit/s with GSM and up tp 43 kbit/s using
> > > HSCSD - bu then it is even more expensive.
> > >
> > > How is this in the US and in Japan. What are the current availble data
> > > rates and the costs ?
> 
> in Europe you can get 9.6 kbps on GSM, but GPRS is going to be exploited in some
> months, with higher rates (almost 171 kbps theoretical, 50 kbps practical, in the
> first phase of deploying). UMTS (3rd generation) licences were assigned to
> operators during last months and now they will begin to develop the networks to
> exploit it within 3/4 years (reaching up to 2 Mbps).
> 
> Hope it helps,
> Peppe

Received on Tuesday, 7 November 2000 14:33:04 UTC