Gartner: Businesses unwilling to pay much more for 3G

Third-generation expenditures in Europe have been through the roof and U.S. carriers continue to make their own hefty investments in the future of wireless. But while demand for high-speed services is expected to make these investments worthwhile, a recent Gartner survey found businesses might not be willing to spend much more for 3G services than what they already pay for wireless.

“Service providers need to be realistic [as to] what they charge for services,” said Phillip Redman, research director for Gartner’s networking group. Redman maintains that the survey findings do not suggest that business consumers are not willing to pay for next-generation services. Instead it proves to be an early warning that carriers need to determine what consumers want rather than rolling out expensive applications that will not be adopted, Redman said.

About 200 corporate users—which included decision makers and other influential members of these companies— participated in the survey at Gartner’s mobile and wireless conference in March. About 55% of respondents were from companies that bring in more than $1 billion in revenue and have about 5,000 employees.

Because 3G is still a reality in the making, no one is firm on what pricing will be like, Redman said. The idea of the survey was to get a better idea of what the value of different applications might be. The findings included the following:

· 54% of those surveyed said they would be willing to spend between 10%-20% more for next-generation wireless data services than they do for existing voice services, and;

· 21% were willing to pay an additional 10% or less for 3G services.

The survey also asked whether business users are satisfied with their current service. Most were found to be satisfied with their service and those who said they were not satisfied cited poor coverage as opposed to issues related to price or handsets.