Mobile broadband industry unites to challenge WiFi

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 30 September 2008 12:06

IT Industry - Strategy

3G wireless broadband is getting cheaper and is increasingly being presented as a viable alternative to DSL. But the mobile industry is not content with this: a bunch of its members have now teamed up to promoted laptops with embedded wireless broadband as "a compelling alternative to WiFi."

The initiative is being lead by the global GSM Association and it has already roped in 16 of the world's best known IT and mobile companies with the promise that it will "enable operators to address a $US50 billion opportunity in both mature and emerging markets."

This figure is derived from a study conducted by Pyramid Research on behalf of the GSMA and Microsoft which found 88 percent of consumers planning to buy a notebook in th $US500-$US1000 price-range would prefer mobile broadband built-in rather than their original choice. Pyramid estimates this market to equate, in 2008, to some 79.5m notebooks with a retail value of $US50m.

The GSMA has more than 750 GSM mobile operator members who between them have more than three billion GSM and 3GSM connections - over 86 percent of the world's mobile phone connections. More than 200 manufacturers and suppliers support the association.

The initial membership of the Mobile Broadband Initiative comprises 3, Asus, Dell, ECS, Ericsson, Gemalto, Lenovo, Microsoft, Orange, Qualcomm, Telefónica Europe, Telecom Italia, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile, Toshiba and Vodafone.

"Mobile Broadband is like a home or office broadband connection with one crucial difference: freedom. Freedom from hot spots, freedom from complexity and freedom from security concerns," said Michael O'Hara, CMO of the GSMA.

Presumably this means that you would not bother with a terrestrial broadband link and combined modem/router/ wireless access point which many people use in their homes today, but would simply used your HSPA enabled laptop over the public cellular network wherever you were.

In the first phase of the initiative, mobile operator, PC manufacturer and chipset provider members of the alliance will pre-install mobile broadband into a range of notebook PCs that they promise "will be ready to switch on and surf straight out of the box in 91 countries across the world."

To enable consumers to identify such products the GSMA has created the Mobile Broadband service mark, saying it will be "backed by a global media spend of more than $US1 billion in the next year - evidence that the industry is serious about this proposition." However it has not indicated whether this is new spend specific to this initiative, or simply the aggregated marking spend of the members on relevant products.

The initiative will ramp up quickly. O'Hara said: "we expect to see on several hundred thousand notebooks in the shops by the [Christmas] holiday season."

However, the GSMA says integrating mobile broadband into notebook PCs is only the first step in a wider strategy to deliver wireless Internet access and management to a whole range of previously unconnected devices - from cameras and MP3 players to refrigerators, cars and set-top boxes.