Here's to You, Horatio Alger

It's time for some good, old-fashioned American ass-whuppin'. From Day 1, European subscribers compulsively clung to their cell phones and wildly ran through talk-time minutes. That drove wireless voice penetration rates across the continent to dizzying heights. Those levels set the bar for the rest of the world — which meant U.S. subscribers were labeled as laggards.

That was their first mistake. As wireless data applications begin to bulk up carrier portfolios, wireless watchers wonder about take rates for mobile data. Will they mirror wireless voice's hockey stick pattern for Europe, or the spineless mini-Nike swoosh for the U.S.?

A few of our drinking buddies across the pond don't think so. U.K.-based consulting firm Ovum insists wireless data penetration will be another in this nation's long list of rags-to-riches stories, with U.S. rates zooming from a currently lackluster 10% to nearly 62% in five years — and outpacing the rest of the world by more than 10%.

Ovum analysts also predict North America will be responsible for $14.7 billion in wireless data revenues — nearly one-quarter of the total global revenue. So how is that possible when the U.S. has no i-mode or SMS heritage from which to draw?

The same up-from-your-bootstraps moxie that got us to Plymouth Rock, that's how. “Europe's explosive growth has already gone through,” said Robin Hearn, wireless analyst for Ovum. Also, European rates are layered with low-end penetration and prepaid users, which U.S. carriers don't have.

The U.S. market is in a position to exploit its CDMA 1X technology to push the wireless data market along, Hearn said. Carriers like Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless have “fairly national coverage” that can benefit from faster data speeds and better services without having to shell out as much as the Europeans did for GPRS.

So what are we waiting for? Of all the carriers in these here United States, so far only Verizon Wireless has launched an initial CDMA 1X footprint.

Said Hearn: “It's time for the U.S. to stand up and say, ‘Hey, we're not this backwater anymore — we have CDMA 1X.’” Just one more reason to call America the New World.