I do not think that the roaming service
is the most interesting point of thi Vodafone announcement.
By delivering the same handsets worldwide Vodafone
is implementing
a powerfull global strategy.
Having the same handsets will soon close
the technological and VAS gap between
USA, Europe and Japan.
As deeper research reveal cultural differences
are important for content but they will be not
limiting the success of the mobile internet.
So as the global market will be mature the
handset technology will be as global as we can see in
consumer eletronics PCs with pructs delivered
at the same time in Asia, North America and Europe.
Giovanni Bertani
...... Original Message .......
On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:09:24 +0900 Gerhard Fasol <fasol@eurotechnology.com>
wrote:
>Eric,
>
>there will never be a single ideal solution for the
>roaming issue.
>
>It's a dream to have a single solution but there will
>never be a single solution for everyone,
>because the carriers need to differentiate
>each other, and there will always be local differentations,
>such as Japanese characters, or intellectual property
>right management issues etc. etc etc etc
>
>I think it's actually much better to have such
>variety!
>
>Gerhard
>
>
>Eric Bossieux wrote:
>> At 1:20 pm +0900 on 20/11/03 Gerhard Fasol wrote:
>>
>>
>>> So each: AU, Vodafone, and DoCoMo have roaming
>>> solutions, every carrier's roaming solution
>>> is different.
>>
>>
>> This I realize and thus, until now, none of them offered an ideal
solution for me.
>>
>>
>>> It's not at all that Vodafone Global Passport
>>> is the only carrier with a roaming solution!!!
>>
>>
>> As far as I can tell, only Vodafone offers a dual-mode, tri-band handset. All of the others
require at least getting another handset. This is what I was trying to avoid.
>>
>> I'm also assuming that Vodafone has roaming agreements with carriers in North America. If
that is so, then I can use just this handset both here in Japan and in
North America. In any case, I'm going to check out the details on
Vodafone's roaming coverage.
>>
>>
>>> All Japanese carriers have multiple roaming
>>> solutions now - it's not at all that Vodafone
>>> is the only one. It's only that Vodafone is
>>> emphasizing roaming in their marketing, so you
>>> might think they are the only ones, but this
>>> is not so.
>>
>>
>> I didn't think that Vodafone was the only carrier offering international
roaming. But, the fact that they play up this feature implies to me that
they are offering something "better" than the others.
>>
>> Case in point: As pointed out on your web site, NTT does offer a
dual-mode (PDC/GSM) handset. But, the last time I looked more than a year
ago, trying to find information about this phone on their web site was next
to impossible. I actually stumbled across it by accident. Perhaps because
it is 2G and it might make their 3G foma look bad. <grin>
>>
>> Maybe with the international roaming competition from KDDI/au and
Vodafone, NTT has made it easier for consumers to roam. I'll have to follow
up on that.
>>
>>
>>> You can find a short listing of the roaming
>>> situation here:
>>> http://www.eurotechnology.com/3G/
>>
>>
>> Thank you for pointing me to the link. It's nice to see a summarized
view of what's available. Still, I can't understand why roaming charges are
still high. Why is that so? The cost for hard/software to provide
international roaming services has dropped, yet the roaming charges still
remain high.
>>
>> I suspect that the agreements are so convoluted and complex to implement
that the operators artifically keep the roaming prices high to discourage
all but the business users. <grin>
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> ---eric
>
>
>--
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>Gerhard Fasol, PhD Eurotechnology Japan K. K.
>fasol_at_eurotechnology.com http://www.eurotechnology.com/
Received on Thu Nov 20 09:29:45 2003