While U.S. wireless carriers have often strayed from the international model when it comes to delivering service, most industry watchers anticipated the U.S.-based GSM carriers would follow a similar path as their worldly brothers when it came to deploying third-generation (3G) networks. Those models started with awkwardly titled 2.5-generation General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) networks, followed by full blown 3G services based on the W-CDMA standard.
But instead of blindly following what were considered the leaders in 3G technology, U.S. GSM operators seem to be in the process of learning from European mistakes and planning alternative paths to delivering high-speed data services. This has led many to claim that the one-time followers in 3G have now become the leaders.
“Eighteen months ago I would have said Europe was going to be the leader in deploying 3G services,” said Peter Griffith, president of the Americas for Dataworkforce and a former senior management consultant to British Telecom in the Netherlands. “Now I have completely changed my mind, even with the U.S. carriers’ limited spectrum.”
The original model European operators followed has seen them spend tens of billions of dollars on spectrum licenses they were told they needed to deploy services and many now are left with nothing left to spend on the networks. Those planned Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks are also still short on the pieces needed to provide commercial service, which the carriers are quickly facing deadlines to deploy.
The pressure is becoming so great that a number of small European operators are looking for ways out. Spanish wireless carrier Telef
