Video phone killed the radio wave star

IT IS NOW over five years since UK specialist network operator, 3, launched 3G onto an unsuspecting British public. And it's taken five years for 3 to take the INQ's advice and forget video.

As hardened survivors of decades of communications 'convergence', the INQ has never seen the argument surrounding the use of phones as real-time video devices.

In 2003, the INQ described 3's focus on video as "a re-run of the fiasco over the promotion of ISDN - which everyone now uses for Internet access but was blindly promoted as being ideal for video calls."

Admittedly, in certain areas, 3 UK has since enjoyed some success with video. For example, it is the leading vendor of full-length music videos in this country. Thanks partly to having a national chart almost entirely to itself.

But that's not real-time video. So, what about using 3G as a means of accessing the mobile internet? Gosh, what a surprise, that's exactly what new 3 UK supremo, Kevin Russell, has decided to do.

He's just placed the company's bets on a UK national advertising campaign that promotes a £10 per month contract for access to the mobile internet.

And judging by how swiftly the company originally ran out of 3G USB modems, Russell is on the right track.

There's another benefit to hindsight. Russell claims 3 UK shouldn't be dismissed just because it has managed to steam through circa £10 billion in five years. He says that Orange was similarly dismissed in its early years.

Orange was, of course, parent group Hutchison's first successful UK mobile venture. But it was originally wrong footed. Or should that be 'rabbit footed'.

When One2one – later to be T-Mobile – kicked off, it acquired more subscribers in one day, that Hutchison ever got for its Rabbit mobile venture.

At that time, too, there were plenty of analysts prepared to say the UK didn't have room for more than three major players.

Just like they are saying today that there's no room for the UK's fifth player – 3. µ

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