April 29, 2003
Hutchison's 3G in Italy
In an interesting article in the IHT, Eric Sylvers, examines Italy's love affair with cell phones, a country with the third-highest penetration rate in the world at 93 percent, surpassing such wireless meccas as Finland and Sweden in the number of cell phones per capita. Italy's mobile mania is what drew Hutchison's 3G into this market a month ago, with its new "third generation" technology that allows for video phone calls, Internet access and interactive gaming.
"Italians have a phone culture and love all the new technology connected to cell phones," Fuller said. "If you make a video phone call in a restaurant in Italy, in a few seconds you have a crowd of people around watching you and getting involved."
H3G, whose parent company also started 3G service in Britain last month, says so far, so good. It said it already had 50,000 customers in Italy, five times more than its British counterpart managed to sign up in its first month. Hutchison targets an ambitious 2 million subscribers in the two countries combined by the end of the year.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2003/04/000504.htm
| Tweet |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
