Hutchison speeds toward its date with destiny

摘要

The Moment Of Truth is fast approaching for Hutchison 3G. As the wireless industry waits with bated breath for Hutchison to launch the first UMTS services in the UK and Italy later this year, it remains to be seen if the greenfield operator will fulfill its promise of delivering multimedia services over wireless phones to the mass market—let alone make money doing so. Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong tycoon behind H3G, has proved a lot of skeptics wrong in the past. While Rabbit, his first foray into the UK market, was a flop, his second, with Orange, was a big hit. According to company officials, Li is itching to prove skeptics wrong this time as well. The odds are a lot greater now, however, and many industry insiders believe they are stacked too heavily against Hutchison's global ambitions to become a pure 3G wireless play. According to senior company officials, H3G still anticipates launching its WCDMA-based 3G wireless services in the UK and Italy by September-followed by service launches in Sweden, Austria, and Australia by the end of 2003 and Denmark sometime after that. At a recent closed-door presentation to invited industry analysts in London-a meeting that lasted four hours-H3G senior management re-emphasized plans to launch in September, despite rumors that it will be forced to put the launch off because of handset delays and network-optimization problems.