By Suzanna Kerridge, 21 June 2001 16:15
NEWS Craig Barrett, president and CEO at Intel, joined the growing list of sceptics when he dismissed 3G services as hype. He claimed 2.5G was more likely to take off in the next few years. Speaking yesterday in London to an audience of industry observers and media, Barrett discussed his views on Intel and the current problems plaguing the IT and telecom industry. Barrett said: "I suspect that 3G is further out there than most people think. It is over hyped a bit. I see 2.5G coming first. That is more of an extension and gives the high bandwidth to let you drop things like video streaming in." "There is not much of an upgrade cost and I see that as opposed to the great upgrades leap of 3G." Bernt Ostergaard, analyst at Giga, agreed claiming there were still many engineering problems in transferring voice and data transmission from circuit switching to packet technology. While 3G requires upgrades to packet technology for voice and data services, 2.5G requires only upgrading data from circuit to packet technology. "The whole 3G network is packet technology and while we have quite a bit of experience with packet switching we do not have the equation for packet switching all sewn up yet. It is fine for non-time-sensitive transmission but a bit iffy for time sensitive issues such as voice and video." He predicted 3G services will not be up and running until late 2003 or early 2004. "The technology and infrastructure has to be built, the services need to be well developed and the old carriers' adage that we can build any services we can bill for is true. Billing needs to be resolved - 3G is a whole new equation." Barrett also attacked WAP, a technology he sees as seeking a problem to solve and claimed it was little league, and clumsy. "There are limited applications for it," he said.
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