When the telecom market's customers have signed their loyalty contracts to the respective telecom companies, those same companies need to find new ways and innovate to dig up a new path for customer growth to happen. At the same time, not only the telecom business realizes the potential of WiFi. There is a trend towards wireless internet as a whole and that most likely will benefit the consumer in terms of prices and availability. But which kind of people do they target? That's the question. I'm thinking that only bigger cities will see competition in this area while other places on the map will have to trust only the telecom operators to serve them.
Here I present to you, some information on where we were yesterday and where we are today:
Early 1990s to mid-1990s
Analog voice
NMT 450
NMT 900
Mid-1990s to 2003
Digital voice
GSM 900
GSM 1800 (only avail. in big cities)
2003 until today
Digital data
WCDMA (very high speeds, shorter range - requires denser tower placement)
NMT CDMA450 (long range coverage - handles good speeds)
Here in Sweden, the national coverage of GSM met the goals several years ago. For as 3G goes, the telecom companies met their goals as late as June earlier this year. Because of the fact that the population saw a growth in-between the coverage agreement papers and the population numbers, they only have the requirement of covering 98 % of the people since that number translates to nearly 100 % of the older population numbers. That might sound weird to you, but a signed agreement is a signed agreement after all. That said, the operators can volunteerly expand the coverage all they want, IF they want to. They just don't need to in terms of regulations set with the government.
I wish to see an expansion and upgrade take place as soon as possible to make sure innovations will keep coming.