Mobiles mean money, probably

Your mobile could tell you if your plane is delayed

By BBC News Online technology correspondent Mark Ward

Mobile phone firms have not wasted their money spending billions on licences for third-generation networks.

The annual Technology Forecast from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that 3G networks will turn out to be money-earners for mobile phone companies.

But the bad news is that no-one seems to know what exactly people or businesses will be using the networks for, nor what will prove most popular.

The forecast warns that network operators have a lot of work to do if they are to make the most of the opportunity offered by the creation of the new high-speed networks.

Technology forecast

Every year, consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) produces a mammoth report that makes predictions about what will happen to a variety of technologies over the next 24 months.

This year, the report focuses on the mobile internet and looks at how mobile phone firms can earn money from it and help to pay the huge fees incurred buying licences to run 3G services.

Eric Berg, director of the Technology Forecast report, said he had no doubt that accessing net-based services via mobile phones had huge potential both for the firms offering the services and the businesses using them. But, he said, neither he, nor the people interviewed for the forecast, could say for sure which services would be most lucrative or what to concentrate on.

"No-one knows," he said. More positively, Mr Berg said it was becoming obvious what future phone services would have to exploit to become widely used.

He said it was unlikely that people will stop using a PC to go online when high-speed mobile networks have been built. "Mobile devices are not well suited to the browsing or surfing that characterises the World Wide Web," said Mr Berg.

Use and abuse

Rather than graft other services on to phones, operators should use the advantages of mobile devices, he said. That mobile phones are always with their owner, let people take advantage of "dead" time when they are travelling or queuing, can be pinpointed to particular locations or places like airports, and let very timely information be delivered - these should all be used to support novel information services, said Mr Berg.

Instead of migrating to new networks to use these services, said Mr Berg, most people will probably prefer to use their existing phone or network rather than spend a lot more money on the unfamiliar 3G system.

Mr Berg predicted that many operators would use the spectrum they gained the right to use with their 3G licence to help them handle the growth in people using the new services rather than simply start offering expensive, high-speed services.

Operators will also have to re-think the way they charge people for these services. Currently, most mobile phone users pay by the time they are connected or for each message they receive.

When data starts to be sent in packets, this type of billing system is inappropriate, said Mr Berg. Instead operators could be forced to adopt simple monthly charges that cover a certain amount of data downloaded every week or month.