GPRS a Success in the Corporate Arena: Telco Analyst

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) will win over corporate mobile phone users, however voice will remain the "killer app", according to telecommunications analyst Paul Budde.

"GPRS will be a success as it is very much aimed at Palm top devices. It will not be a mass-medium technology. There are 30,000 mobile data users in Australia at the moment and by 2005 this will rise to 200,000 business customers on the network."

The launch of Cable & Wireless Optus first Australian commercial GPRS network, which has alliances with Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), IBM and Nokia, is a good move for the telco, Budde said.

"Optus' strategy is to move into the corporate market and out of the consumer market. Internationally the company's focus is corporate and GPRS is good technology to establish a corporate service."

GPRS, which can be applied to existing GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) cellular networks, provides packet transmission capabilities, which is a more efficient way to send data and can boost data speed from the current 9.6Kbit/sec to as high as 115Kbit/sec.

The greatest advantage of GPRS lies in possible continuous connections to the Internet, the corporate intranet or a WAP (wireless application protocol) portal.

Budde said by 2003 with G3, higher speeds and better services, GPRS will be successful among business users, unlike WAP, which Budde says is "crap", and will not survive.

"The combination of WAP and GPRS may be successful, but most countries around the world have withdrawn it. It will not really take off. The concept may resurface, but using the Internet on a mobile doesn't make sense. I think it is case of technology looking for an application and this is where WAP has failed."

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