But two key elements currently stand in the way of broad 3G acceptance. The first is a lack of compelling applications and the subscriber units to take advantage of them. I've even heard more than a few potential users talk about how they "really don't know what they'd do with throughput like that." Yeah, right. How often do you hear someone say they don't want higher data speeds? They will, once the mobile experience is more like that of the desktop, and as intranet-based applications find their way to wireless users.

We're also seeing more phones in a PDA form factor. While not convenient for everyone (and never likely to be so), the larger display is adequate for a desktop-like experience in many cases. The microbrowser is growing up. We continue to narrow the behavioral and experiential differences between wireline and wireless.

And that brings up the second, more-critical problem: pricing. Both Sprint and Verizon sell their service by the byte, and this just isn't going to work. Given the ever-increasing size of Web pages, not to mention all of the pop-up ads, plug-ins, eye candy and other common bandwidth hogs, one could run up a pretty big bill getting absolutely nothing done. Seven bucks a month for WAP starts to look appealing. What's needed is a reasonable all-you-can-eat data plan. Today's $100 for such is way too much to attract a lot of users.

Over the long term, no matter what, 3G is going to see broad installation simply because it offers much better spectral efficiency than 2G. Two of the largest costs for any operator are real estate and spectrum, and needing less of these is good for the bottom line. Even if 3G is only used for voice (and we're now seeing voice-only 1XRTT phones), the carriers will simply find it irresistible-data services are, in many ways, just a bonus. But they still need to do something about the price.

Craig Mathias is an Analyst with the Farpoint Group (Ashland, Mass.).