By Polly Raymond, 19 June 2000 00:15
NEWS The mammoth price paid during the UK 3G mobile licences will be dwarfed by the revenue streams they create, according to the IT experts on silicon.com's Big Question this week. Their views contrast with those of technology guru Nicholas Negroponte and TMA director general David Harrington, made earlier this month. Guests from across the IT industry were discussing the UMTS auctions that took place in April and considering the ability of the winning bidders - BT, One2One, Orange, TIW and Vodafone - to claw back their £22.5bn investment. John Lane, director of Pagoda Consulting, said: "When there is real bandwidth your mobile phone will become your whole presence in the world. The amount of services that can be over them are endless. Therefore the licence fee will look very small in ten years time and the companies hugely profitable." Chris Setz, director of the Network Professional Association, agreed but warned that the companies must keep their eye on the market. "The only risk is that they don't know whether they're going to be undermined by new technological developments," he said. Setz said he was concerned that the network operators may try to pass the initial investment costs onto users. Nick Graham-Rack, chief technology officer at The Smith Group, which advised the auction organisers, says that prices will be kept down by competition between the five network operators. He said: "Unlike the internet where the pricing structure changed as new companies entered the market and eventually made access free, the network operators will be very competitive and keen to grab market share by keeping prices reasonable." You can watch the full Big Question programme in the Mobile & Wireless Channel (http://www.silicon.com/a38108 ).
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