GPRS: Not everybody's cup of 3G

But let's step back from network and billing issues for a moment. The current generation of mobile phones means much the same thing to most people. We make use of voice communication, some text messaging, and even the occasional WAP service. However, this uniformity is about to change.

It's all a lot like television. As recently as ten years ago, TV meant the same thing to most people (at least in the UK) - four or five channels and a shared viewer experience. Nowadays, there are enough channels and platforms to make the medium an entirely different thing to different people. The same thing is about to happen with mobile telephony.

Although everyone is talking about evolution to third-generation (3G) networks - via so-called 2.5G technologies (including GPRS, offering higher speed and packet-based data delivery) - like any evolution, not everyone makes the leap.

This is partly because of what users want. There will always be those, for example, who will only use voice, even if their calls end up carried on 3G networks. Others will never go near premium rate multimedia services, opting instead for, say, simple messaging or net access.

But the mixed scenario will also be because of network roll out. Handsets that switch between different frequency bands will soon be joined by those that switch between different types of network and network technology. It is likely that 3G networks will never cover the whole of most sizeable countries. Likewise, other types of technology will be stronger in certain cells.

This is because of the economics of service provision and the limits of the technology itself. Let's not be surprised by this, but demand network operators are honest with what they're touting.