9/1/2010 9:59:55 AM
IT Comms news: WiFi threat to 3G revenues
Within five years most consumers will be using handsets that
provide Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, according to ABI Research. Soon
to follow will be the switch to multi-core processing which will
lend itself to better battery life.
It is expected the penetration rate of GPS to double between
2010 and 2015, but Wi-Fi chips would deliver the highest revenue of
the three connectivity means over the next five years.
But there is an issue for operators. If we all have Wi-Fi on our
mobile phones, users may switch to using free Voice Over Internet
(VoIP) calls rather than 3G services. Will this result in the
operators raising prices for data calls in the short to medium
term, and penalising 3G calls in the longer term as they increase
their network capacity with Long Term Evolution (LTE)
technology?