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By silicon.com, 3 March 2003 17:03

COMMENT We've shaken our heads at the licensing excesses, heard about the glitches, sighed at the missed launches and even scrutinised the sleek advertising campaign. Now 3 - Hutchison's greenfield UK mobile venture - has launched. Where are the fireworks, you ask? Enough has been written about its low-key launch. With so much expectation and so many people - predictably - looking for a failure, it is no surprise it wants to tread carefully, at least for now. While mobile operators the world over have risked billions on 3G networks, Hutch is arguably taking the biggest risk of all. Its new ventures in a number of countries could turn out to be collectively the world's biggest business failure. Ever. It should come as no shock that for months some securities analysts have, in hushed tones, been giving Hutchison a zero valuation, such is their optimism for the market, or that one of our competitors in online news has for some months been running a forum simply entitled 'Will Hutchison fail?' It has a tough ride ahead. And the latest figures aren't promising. An IDC/Orange survey today calls for businesses to take up mobile data solutions - against a backdrop of so far failing to exploit proven technologies. And then there are the IT managers who, only seeing devices such as smart phones as applicable in a 3G environment, sit and wait. The industry needs momentum and right now it's in a rut. Against this backdrop, the 3 launch is all the more important. For one thing, it is aimed at consumers. The business prejudices ("What, you want me to integrate this stuff with our servers?!") shouldn't apply. But will enough people fork out the cash, preferably at least £60 per month? (At least the early figures show more people pre-registering for 3 in the UK and Italy than all NTT DoCoMo's 3G users to date - though eventual subscriber numbers will likely be lower.) Way back when, operators and equipment makers would say 3G won't be like the digital wave of mobile communications we now know as 2G - it will have to be mass market from day one, if it is to succeed, they said. Those same people typically now won't admit that must be the case but let's hope 3 - and Hutch in general - can go someway to proving 3G can be common. All eyes are on them, those shops, those ads, those elusive handsets...