O2’s makes its official entry to the 3G market today with the availability of its 3G/GPRS/WLAN PC data card package. The launch makes O2 the final UK operator to offer some kind of commercially available 3G service, but the operator played down concerns it is late to the game.
Dave McGlade, CEO of O2 UK, put the data card launch in the context of O2’s overall strategy, saying that in his view mass market adoption of 3G is stil la year away. Vodafone has recently announced a range of 10 3G phones for the Christmas market this year.
“O2 understands that in mobile it’s not about being first to market but delivering on customer service promises. 3G is not just a new toy for watching videos or playing games. It is the next step in our evolving strategy to offer our customers attractive, compelling and intuitive non-SMS data applications.
“As an industry we have a track record of hyping technology before it is ready. Instead we should be launching it only when it has the right customer experience. At O2 we are committed to breaking this cycle. In relation to 3G, our strategy has always been about giving customers what they want, not what we want them to have and that means providing a suite of technologies of which 3G is one. 3G will be a central pillar for the mobile industry moving forwards – but we won’t see mass market adoption of this technology until late 2005. I believe that we have a very sensible view of the present and an optimistic vision of the future when it comes to 3G.”
At first sight the card seems a little more integrated than other offerings. O2 has not just a deal in place with hotspot operators OpenZone, The Cloud and Excilan, but live sitse up and running. It also has an updateable list of hotspots on its Communication Manager client, as well as proven VPN support.
The operator is offering no stand-alone “3G” pricing as such, instead offering 3G as one connection technology within its data service packages. Comparisons are difficult, but if you take 1GB of monthly usage O2 does seem, at £105 to be more expensive than T-Mobile (£70 flat rate for the time being) and Vodafone and Orange (£75).
O2 counters that its usage is shareable across a number of users within a business, giving IT and comms managers more flexibility across a group of users. Unlike T-Mobile, which offers a connection rate of 128kbps, but like the other operators, O2 offers up to 384kbps connectivity.
O2 will also offer customers access to the wireless hotspots of BTOpenzone and The Cloud — which together own over 6000 hotspots in the UK — for an additional £30 per month. T-Mobile includes hotspot access in its fixed monthly charge. Vodafone has only just announced a deal with BT Openzone for hotspot access, and according to O2 has no live sites yet. O2 used this as an example of its justification for waiting before launch.
“We could have rushed out a date ages ago,” a spokesperson said, “but we wanted to wait for the results of customer trials and to know we had a really good customer experience sp we had the right service.”
As for network coverage the operator says it will have just under 30% of the population one month after launch. Vodafone had 30% coverage when it launched in April, which it has since increased, and Orange launched in July with 66% population coverage. T-Mobile declines to reveal its network coverage. O2 has said it will have 50% population coverage by June 2005. By the terms of its licence it must have 80% by December 2007.