Analysys had previously indicated that General Packet Radio Services (GPRS), allowing consumers and business constant access to the Internet, would have 6 million subscribers in western Europe by the end of 2002 (see
Roaming Will Drive GPRS Take Up, Says Analysys). However, systems are not yet in place to enable GPRS to be used by a mainstream audience and Gartner warns that revenue forecasts will have to be reduced as a result.
“GPRS and other 2.5G data services will succeed only after considerable experimentation with new applications,” says Bill Clark, a Gartner research director. “We expect GPRS to break even in the 2009-to-2011 time frame, long after future wireless services such as 3G are due to be deployed.”
The report concludes that operators will have to invest a further $9bn on infrastructure by 2005 in order to complete network loading. This is in addition to the $113bn required for GPRS voice and data rollouts.
