Cebit 2001 sets the stage for GPRS cellular debuts
By Berni K. Moestafa
HANOVER, Germany (JP): A year has passed since cell phone manufacturers introduced the concept of the mobile Internet through the use of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).
WAP is the first technology to allow cell phones to access the Internet and retrieve simple information such as stock market quotes, weather conditions, or flight schedules.
But while WAP applications have barely hit the market, cellular manufacturers this year already hail the debut of WAP's second generation: GPRS.
The acronym for General Packet Radio Service, GPRS and its compatible cell phones attracted thousands of visitors to this year's Cebit telecommunications exhibition in Hanover.
Cebit, which ended last Wednesday, hit a record number of over 8,000 exhibitors despite a global gloom on tech stocks.
"It's (GPRS) the best technology currently available for (wireless) data transmission," said product consulting manager Heinz-Josef Pick, of the American based cell phone manufacturer Motorola.
GPRS allows cell phone operators to deliver faster data transfer. It improves WAP services where slow data transfer has been a disappointment to the introduction of mobile Internet facilities.
And unlike WAP, where users have to log on to the Internet first, GPRS is always connected to the Internet so that users can for example, read stock quotes as they move.
Faster speed and constant connectivity to the Internet make the use of GPRS also cheaper than WAP. Users only pay for the amount of data transferred, instead of the time spent logged on.
In Germany GPRS is already available, Motorola's product consulting manager, Pick continued.
He said Motorola introduced its new GPRS-enabled cell phones in February this year. "There are a few thousand customers in Germany, but the market is growing fast."
He estimated that the market for GPRS would pick up next year.
"I know that most of the GSM operators worldwide are planning to introduce GPRS," he added.
In line with the confidence of GPRS' future, all major cell manufacturers introduced their GPRS-enabled cell phones at Cebit.
Motorola bundles nearly all of its new cell phones with GPRS technology, a total of five new handsets.
They are the sleek V66, probably the smallest GPRS phone to hit the market; the accompli 008, a combination of palmtop and hand phone; the talkabout 192; and the new timeport series 260 and 280.
French cell phone manufacturer, Alcatel debuted its GPRS cell phone in February, making an early entry into GPRS territory with its One-Touch 502.
Presented at Cebit, the One-touch 502 cell phone is an elegant handset with an ample display area for browsing the Internet.
Alcatel mobile phone division spokeswoman Be'atrice Mandine said the company planned the launching of more GPRS cell phones by the end of this year.
Arriving a bit later, but no less aggressive, is Ericsson with its GPRS and bluetooth-enabled T39, due out in the second quarter of this year.
Equipped with bluetooth technology, T39 users can wear hands- free accessories without needing the cables that normally connect the earphones to the handset.
The T39, the latest version of the T series, comes as a triple band phone giving higher mobility to its users around the world.
Other GPRS phones by Ericsson are the R520 and the T68, the latter offering a color display with multimedia messaging capabilities.
Ericsson plans to have GPRS on all of its cell phones by the year 2002.
The world's largest cell phone manufacturer, Nokia, will bring in two new GPRS cell phones, the 8310 and the 6310.
Set for global launching in the third quarter of this year, the stylish 8310 is the latest version of the 8250, already available in Indonesia.
The 6310 is aimed at the more mature user when it hits the market sometime in the fourth quarter of this year.
S45 with GPRS
German-based Siemens takes on GPRS with less fanfare, displaying only one GPRS-enabled handset, the S45.
Distancing itself from other cell phone manufacturers, Siemens claims that the S45 not merely supports GPRS technology, but has been specifically built around it.
"We looked more for a product that gives the end users the right display, the right look and the right feel (for GPRS)," Siemens mobile devices president Peter Zapf told visiting journalists from Malaysia and Indonesia.
The S45 is the latest generation of the S series. Despite its more sophisticated features, the S45 has fewer buttons than its predecessors, yet promises simpler use through voice commands.
And at 93 grams, the S45 is also lighter than the S35 or S25.
The German cell phone producer plans to launch the product sometime in mid-2001.
However, Siemens' launching of only one GPRS handset also sets a more sober tone to all the hype behind this new technology.
"We want to wait for the (GPRS) market to mature," Zapf said.
Following the disappointment with WAP, the telecommunications industry is likely to keep a watchful eye on how GPRS will perform.
Cell phone operators have poured billions of U.S dollars into obtaining third generation (3G) UMTS mobile phone licenses, of which GPRS is a vital intermediate step.
The industry sees UMTS, or the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System, as the third generation of cellular phones where the potential of mobile Internet use can be fully realized.
In practical terms, UMTS allows music, video, photos, voice and text to be transferred from anywhere in the world at high speed.
But the disappointment with WAP, and fears of over-investment in UMTS, have sent jitters through banks financing the transition to 3G.
For Germany alone, European cell phone operators joined in a bidding frenzy costing them some 50.519 billion euros for 3G operating licenses.
A study by Forrester Research early this year predicted that European cell phone operators would fail to generate sufficient revenue to cover the investment in UMTS networks.
Also, a U.S led slowdown in the world economy is hurting cell phone sales, and delaying investment in GPRS networks in several countries, further weakening GPRS' prospects in the near future.
Cell phone giant Nokia said in a statement last week that the growth of its cell phone sales for the first quarter of this year is unlikely to meet its target of 25 to 30 percent.
The success of GPRS is seen as the key to maintaining investors' confidence in the telecommunications industry, otherwise the money spent on UMTS might never pay off.
At Cebit, cell phone manufacturers put their full support behind GPRS, allowing no room for doubt.
"Nobody can ignore GPRS," Siemens' mobile devices head, Zapf went on to say.
He admitted GPRS' vital role for moving up to UMTS, but dismissed worries that it would follow the same path as WAP, arguing that the same mistakes with WAP would not happen again.
"Everybody in the industry learnt the lessons of what can go wrong if something is not standardized, not well prepared and not very well explained to the end users," he said, on WAP's poor performance.
One of the main complaints of WAP users is its slow access to the Internet, and consequently, the high cost of using this technology.
GPRS eliminates such disincentives, as users are always connected to the Internet at a speed almost equaling the connection over a fixed telephone line.
The high speed is made possible as GPRS divides large amounts of data into smaller packages that are routed individually to their destinations.
Data travels at a speed of up to 384 kilobytes per second (kbps), compared with 9.56 kbps under the GSM network on which WAP functions.
"Now we have to go back and explain to the market what are the benefits of GPRS, and hope we can make this clear," Zapf said.
As for Indonesia, he said the S45 would be launched regardless of whether local cell phone operators were GPRS-ready or not.
"The launching of new cell phones in Indonesia may lag behind Europe by about one month only," said Robby Darmasetiawan, the head of mobile devices at PT Dian Graha Electrika, which is in charge of handling, among others, Siemens cell phones here.
Robby said that Indonesian cell phone operators were already set for the transition into GPRS.
"Operators need only upgrade their existing GSM network to GPRS," he explained.
According to him, cell phone operators here have already obtained the government license for operating the GPRS bandwidth.
But he added that without someone providing Internet services for cell phones, having a GPRS cell phone would be no different from owning a normal cell phone.