3GSM keynoters react to WiMAX, iPhone

BARCELONA, Spain-A trio of executives from operators counting more than 400 million subscribers made for an entertaining opening keynote at this year’s 3GSM World Congress.
As has been the case for several years, Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin led off the keynote proceedings at 3GSM, this year with an extra bounce in his step as his company was the high bidder for 67 percent of coveted Indian operator Hutchison. The deal, valued at more than $11 billion for India’s No. 4 operator, bolsters Vodafone’s customer base by more than 22 million subscribers.
As a side note, it was nearly three years ago that Sarin was on the losing end of Vodafone’s attempt to acquire U.S.-based operator AT&T Wireless Services Inc. after its $38 billion bid was topped at the last minute by Cingular Wireless L.L.C.’s $41 billion bid. At the time, AWS had roughly the same number of customers as Hutchison Essar, highlighting the higher perceived value of U.S. customers. Of course, Vodafone has its 45-percent stake in Verizon Wireless, which likely helped ease the pain of losing out on AWS.
But, back in Barcelona, Sarin touted the benefits of the Hutchison deal, noting Vodafone had a “massive opportunity in India.” However, other keynoters offered words of caution.
Orascom Chairman and CEO Naguib Sawiris pointed out repeatedly that-unlike his fellow CEOs-he has controlling ownership of his company, which he said makes him especially in tune with Orascom’s performance. As for emerging markets, Sawiris noted that Orascom recently sold off many of its holdings in Africa after realizing that those properties were consuming more than 90 percent of his management’s time while accounting for less than 10 percent of the company’s revenues.
The 3GSM speakers also offered their views on many of the industry’s hot topics.
Sarin expressed concern over the slow pace of technology evolution in the GSM family, comparing the current state of the Long Term Evolution path for UMTS with WiMAX. Sarin noted that while LTE is still in the development phase, backers of the WiMAX standard have already managed final approval of the technology.
Despite the apparent praise for WiMAX, Sarin noted during the question-and-answer portion of the keynote that he thought WiMAX was “still not ready for primetime,” and that he did not think it would be for a couple of years.
Sarin also took a dig at Sprint Nextel Corp., which last year announced plans to launch a WiMAX network beginning later this year.
‘Sprint Nextel has a CDMA2000 1x and iDEN network, so it appears they like to have several networks running in parallel. I don’t understand the logic, maybe someone could explain it to me,” Sarin said in response to a question regarding WiMAX’s progress, adding that CDMA was a great technology, but as become a “niche” technology in the 2G world.
Of course, no meeting of the industry’s elite could end without comments on Apple Inc.’s recently announced iPhone device. While the device is not expected to make it across the pond until at least the end of the year, all on stage were impressed with the simplicity of Steve Job’s wireless baby.
“iPhone is a good step,” said Ahuja, who previously noted that the industry needed to work on reducing complexity of wireless devices. “Steve has done a good job, he has raised the bar and the others will react.”