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IP: How the world caught third-generation fever
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 05:59:06 -0400
From: "the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow" <geoff () iconia com> To: "Dave E-mail Pamphleteer Farber" <farber () cis upenn edu> How the world caught third-generation fever The bidding for 3G mobile licences marked the turning point in an investment frenzy that sucked in $4,000bn, says Dan Roberts Published: September 5 2001 17:53GMT The Financial Times One of the biggest handwritten cheques ever cashed was scribbled in a hurry in the spring of 2000 by four men who had barely seen daylight for seven weeks. The team worked for Orange, in London's West End, one of five mobile phone companies that paid a total of £22.5bn during a government auction for licences to operate "third-generation" mobile services in the UK. It has become clear in the past few months that the frantic bidding for these and other 3G mobile licences throughout western Europe marked the turning-point in a four-year investment frenzy that ultimately sucked in $4,000bn (£2,800bn) worldwide. To understand how an entire industry could gamble and lose such sums, picture the manifest destiny that inspired Orange's team of bidders. Their cramped office could be reached only through four separate security doors, each with sophisticated combination locks and swipe-card systems. The windows were blacked out to prevent anyone observing the bidding tactics with binoculars. During the auction, the room was regularly swept for electronic listening devices. --SNIP-- One of the most influential regular studies of mobile phone use, produced by A.T. Kearney management consultants and Cambridge Business School, is due to reveal tomorrow that most consumers are utterly uninterested in surfing the internet from their mobile phone. Of 2,400 mobile phone users interviewed, just 4 per cent said they thought they were ever likely to use their phone to spend money online (down from 12 per cent in the last survey, six months ago). Only 2 per cent had tried to do this with existing generations of internet-enabled phones, which have already cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy. --SNIP-- http://tm0.com/sbct.cgi?s=125256324&i=387239&d=1741227 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- geoff.goodfellow () iconia com, Prague CZ * tel/mobil +420 (0)603 706 558 "success is getting what you want & happiness is wanting what you get" http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/01/biztech/articles/17drop.html
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- IP: How the world caught third-generation fever David Farber (Sep 06)