| 3G Deployment Status: Better Late Than Never? |
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After many years of delays, due to several causes, 3G is finally being launched throughout the world in growing numbers. First, delays were caused by technical problems on getting the infrastructure and software to work. After that, there were problems in getting enough 3G handsets for consumers, and when these handsets were available, they were big and clunky, and had battery lives that wouldn’t even support a day of standby time. For those that actually bought the first devices, coverage was poor, as many carriers simply put their new 3G base stations at the same locations as their previous base stations, which at least for W-CDMA base stations, provided less than optimal coverage.
This report looks at some of the issues related to deploying 3G throughout the world, and contains the status of almost 200 3G carriers who have, or will soon deploy 3G, and includes the air-interface they use, the dates and amounts of recent 3G infrastructure contracts awarded, who they purchase infrastructure from (when known), and estimates of the number of W-CDMA Node B's they purchased in 2002 and 2003.
Carriers are sorted by launch date, country, and air-interface deployed.
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