Is 3G just about speed?

Earlier this month, we saw country’s first privately held 3G service from Tata Docomo. With large marketing efforts across all possible advertising medium, Tata Docomo established itself as the first private company to roll out commercial 3G services across 9 circles. This was analogous to NTT Docomo, the partners being the first company in the world to provide commercial 3G, a few years back! We’ve had promises from Airtel and Vodafone to launch 3G soon.

3G has been in India for the past several months, but owned by MTNL and BSNL, the PSU duo. Let’s not get into a debate of performance and service they offer!

We’ve had iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS phones in India, much before we had 3G. To some, that may sound astonishing! But that’s the fact. A phone which is supposedly one of the most powerful phones in the Indian market was handicapped over 2G networks!

But does that mean 3G network is just about speed? No. Hence I gave an example of iPhone. The sheer beauty this device has and which makes it a smartphone is the OS and the ability to enhance the device using numerous applications, which range from being available for free to several thousand dollars!

3G technology is more about the experience it brings in, rather than the speed. Speed may just be an enabler. The services, applications, possibilities, emerging devices and reliability is what comes as a bundle.

A few days ago, I got a chance to visit the land of 3G - Japan and experience the 3G and the next generation technologies! Thanks to TATA Docomo for sponsoring the trip! Japan is not only the land of rising sun, but a land where the first commercial 3G was launched! Japan has experienced 3G for a few years already and are shortly moving to the next generation mobile technology called LTE (Long-Term-Evolution) which has far more capabilities and speed!