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The Ovum View: The 3G World Cup - what's the score?
Football fans aren't the only ones looking forward to the World Cup. The mobile operator community is relishing the opportunity to make serious money from the event - even without 3G. Riccardo Ottolenghi, analyst at Mobile@Ovum, explains.

By editorial@silicon.com

Published: Friday 31 May 2002

The industry has certainly come a long way since France 1998, when there was no i-mode, SMS or data services. In 2002, anxious to show off their technical savvy, mobile operators in South Korea and Japan have created the most complete service offering available yet. A considerable degree of national rivalry means each country's Telecommunications Ministry is eager to point out the relative merits of their home service offering.

The three Korean mobile operators - SKT, KTF and LGT - have launched several new services to coincide with the event. International roaming over GSM - a new feature for CDMA operators - will be made possible through the provision of rental handsets.

It was thought World Cup 2002 would showcase pervasive W-CDMA technology. But, ironically, for this event the upstart CDMA2000, which was left behind as most operators around the world pledged allegiance to the W-CDMA flavour of 3G, offers fans the most cohesive roaming. Also on offer are multimedia services - video telephony, video on demand (download type) - and wireless internet for tourists (location-specific and m-commerce).

Korean operators are involved in negotiations to get a Fifa licence to provide World Cup news and video images over mobile phones. The service is aimed at fans that were unable to buy tickets to the games and want to console themselves by watching video clips of winning goals on their mobile phones. Since most football viewers will watch the game on TV, it remains to be seen whether there is a market for such services, although the likes of Hutchison 3G have pledged to offer them.

Plans have been made to prevent the overload of communications systems in the region due to an expected barrage of calls, text messages and mobile email. For example, NTT DoCoMo has announced volume reduction plans of up to 12.5 per cent.

Meanwhile in Europe, the 'reserves' are studying the form and hoping to learn from current mistakes for when they take centre stage at Germany 2006.

It seems every opportunity to make money from this event has been canvassed. Mobile operators in Western Europe have launched services offering up to the minute text message alerts on your country's progress throughout the contest. They have produced football-related quizzes, games and betting services. Hardcore fans can also buy their team's national anthem as a ring-tone, as well as logos and screensavers.

In the UK, Vodafone is offering SMS services on full time and halftime scores and each goal the England team scores. Fans can get SMS about the team line-up, red cards, group standings and team news alerts until England are knocked out. If this is not enough, they can also get SMS about all Group F matches, other countries' games, plus a final full time message in the event of a golden goal or penalties.

For those watching the game in a crowd, SMS traffic will also increase because it's a less intrusive way to communicate in public.

Vodafone says on its website: "An estimated 33 billion viewers in 196 countries watching 64 matches played by 32 teams... it can only mean one thing."

And that's a substantial amount of extra revenue for mobile operators worldwide.

For related Ovum research see our reports, MMS and SMS: Multimedia Strategies for Mobile Messaging and Streaming Media: Commercial Opportunities, and the Mobile@Ovum Advisory Services. E-mail: info@ovum.com or visit www.ovum.com
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