View: Here We Go Again

There’s a natural order to things, especially in this industry. It goes something like this: Claim differentiation from other carriers, launch basically the same service as everyone else and call it by another name. In my own jaded view, this is how I expect 3G wireless to launch.

Never mind that of all of the major transformations that wireless has undergone, 3G offers the greatest opportunity for carriers to stray from this order and actually deliver “differentiated” services. It was just too much to hope that 3G’s implementation would be different.

Certainly this morning when I checked the business wire and saw the news story about the leading 3G combatants, I felt a certain déjà vu. According to the story, KDDI President Tadashi Onodera reportedly said his company’s 3G handsets would rival NTT DoCoMo’s on price. Yes, folks, you heard correctly - similar price.

Bottom line: Leading 3G carriers launch services that look alike, sound alike, perform alike and operate on similarly priced devices. Where’s the difference?

The difference is in the technology. KDDI will operate this fall on a cdma2000 1X network vs. NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA-based network.

Sure. This is valid information every subscriber will be eager to know and act upon. Now will we expect them to get an engineering degree with that 3G purchase as well?