To print: Click here or Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

This story was printed from silicon.com, located at http://www.silicon.com/

Story URL: http://comment.silicon.com/weeklyroundup/0,39024756,11024515,00.htm

A Manx tale
Rather like the cats which hail from the same place, the tale of Manx Telecom's 3G roll-out hasn't ended quite how you'd have expected.

By Graham Hayday

Published: Friday 18 May 2001

The telco which serves the good folk of the Isle of Man is owned by BT, both of whom were justly proud to have built the world's first 3G network.

It even made the national news.

Shame, then, that it doesn't actually work. Reports suggest that a glitch in NEC's 3G handsets has delayed things by a couple of months.

NEC also had a wee hiccup with its contribution to NTT DoCoMo's 3G network in Japan. But a company spokesman was keen to stress the two incidents were entirely unrelated. "The problem here is with the whole system, not a specific terminal or handset. The two networks are completely different, so the Isle of Man delay cannot be compared to the issue in Japan."

Fair enough. The spokesman wanted to point out that the network will finally be ready for a summer launch: "We have engineers on site in the Isle of Man, and they will be working 36 hours a day to correct the problem."

That's a good trick. Is it related to the extra leg people from the Isle of Man have? See their flag for details.

Meanwhile, BT has told its shareholders that it's not quite sure why it bothered with the whole 3G malarkey in the first place.

In a prospectus released on Tuesday, everyone's favourite telco said: "BT cannot give shareholders any assurance that it will make an economic return from its 3G investments."

The note of caution is not all that unusual, given it's in a prospectus: if your company made some outrageous claim promising to make millions from an unproven technology and then failed to do so, your shareholders' lawyers might get a bit twitchy.

But BT did go on to say something more remarkable. "3G technology is not yet fully developed, and this process may take longer than anticipated. The result may not prove superior to existing technologies."

It's a bit late in the day to spot a banana skin of that size, isn't it?

But fear not: the totally unbiased UMTS Forum reckons that revenues from 3G services worldwide will represent a cumulative market opportunity of around $1 trillion between now and 2010.

The Forum also predicts:
- Total operator-retained annual revenues of over $300bn for 3G services by 2010
- In 2010 the average 3G subscriber will spend about $30 per month on 3G data services
- Non-voice service revenues will dominate voice revenues by 2004 and comprise 66 per cent of 3G service revenues by 2010
- Asia Pacific represents the single largest total revenue opportunity - reaching $120bn in 2010
- Europe and North America will provide the highest annual revenue ($150 - $200 per year).

BT is, inevitably, a member of the UMTS Forum. Nothing like being able to see both sides of the argument, is there?

Anyone silly enough to tune-in to Keith Chegwin's suave, sophisticated, live online TV programme on Monday morning would have got a bit of a surprise: no, the show wasn't good. Instead, his site (http://www.cheggersbedroom.com ) had succumbed to the Unix/Sadmind worm, meaning that if you had boldly gone where very few people had gone before, you'd have been greeted with this message: "f**k USA government f**k Poizon BOx."

The worm - a patch for which has been available since 1999 - affects Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 or 5.0 (don't they all?), and versions of Solaris 7 (or lower).

Never one to pass up the opportunity for a cheeky soundbite, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos Anti-Virus, said: "To suffer this type of attack, Chegwin's operating system must have been as exposed to the world as he was when he presented Naked Jungle."

We had no idea you were a fan, Graham...

And finally this week, two tributes. First to Tim Berners-Lee, who has been awarded a fellowship of the Royal Society (which is about the highest accolade a scientist can get in the UK). Well-deserved, and long-overdue we reckon. (See http://www.silicon.com/a39370 ) for an interview with the man himself).

But news that Douglas Adams' grand hitchhike through life, the universe and everything came to a premature end last weekend was greeted with enormous sadness. Although he never claimed to be a predictive writer, his fictional Guide bears some remarkable similarities to the web, and in particular a project he was recently involved in - http://www.h2g2.com - a site which is, in essence, a repository for knowledge of all kinds, and is accessible via your mobile phone.

Adams had been working on a film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with Disney, some 20 years after he first began work on the radio play - a tribute to the enduring quality and popularity of the series.

See http://www.silicon.com/a44376 for our brief tribute to him, or http://www.silicon.com/a39603 for a video interview we did with him just last year.

Adams, a slightly ill-disciplined writer, once said that one of his favourite sounds was that made by deadlines as they whooshed past him.

Speaking of which... but before we go, don't forget that we're celebrating the life and work of another high-tech hero this week - Linus Torvalds. See http://www.silicon.com/linusweek to see an exclusive interview with him, to read extracts from his autobiography (which you can also order via the site for 10 per cent less than the price you'd pay in the shops), and to stand a chance of winning a trip to Helsinki. Can't say fairer than that.

The Round-Up will be back next Friday...