3G status

3G status

The world's 100th commercial W-CDMA network (Pannon Hungary) has been powered recently, marking a new milestone in 3G deployment. It took about 30 months building the first fifty 3G networks and only 18 months building the next fifty 3G networks: relatively low start, then a considerable acceleration. According to Informa, "the pace of W-CDMA network roll-out might appear sluggish, but interestingly enough, it bears striking parallels to early GSM network deployment".

50 networks are in Europe, 37 in APAC and 13 in NA. Japanese DoCoMo and Hutchison 3G respectively hold 47% and 29% of the 34,5m mobile WCDMA subscribers.

According to Northern Sky Research, the future of 3G is bright. It will benefit from its technological and deployment advantages to limit the impact of other technologies such as WiMAX, UWB, 4G, in the next five years. 3G has three years in advance on WiMAX, and new 3G upgrades (HSDPA, .rev A,.) will reinforce its leadership in coming years.