After splashing out ?22 billion (US$42.13 billion) in the UK for instance on third-generation data licenses during the height of the dotcom frenzy, there is a strong desire to make 3G profitable -- so the operators are working in overdrive.
"And they have to be," said Julian Hewett, chief analyst at Ovum. "According to our forecasts, revenues from voice services are going to be in decline."
This is the stark financial imperative for mobile operators to broker content deals and trumpet new products. Faced with declining profits from voice calling, the networks have turned to content as their third way -- a ploy to get customers to keep spending money.
Ringtones and messaging continue to perform remarkably, but operators and handset manufacturers alike are increasingly placing their focus on mobiles -- especially 3G phones -- as the perfect platform to deliver valuable text, video and music.
The future's data
"This is an exciting time," said Bob Iannucci, a senior vice president at Nokia and the head of Nokia Research Center, where the mobile manufacturer develops new products and interfaces.
"The mobile industry had explosive growth around voice in the 1990s. Now, over the coming years, it is data -- video, music and the like -- that is going to explode," he said.
This prediction is shared by most industry insiders, a proposition that essentially boils down to "the future's bright, the future's data." They dream of properly translating the revolutions that have rocked the internet to cellular networks.
It is a promise that phones have never really delivered on, but has now become possible using existing protocols and faster technologies such as 3G.
At the moment, this is delivered to customers in a limited fashion through walled-garden operator portals.
By contrast, the world inhabited by Tomy Kamada, the co-founder of Japanese software licensing firm Access, is one that looks a lot like the Internet. That's because it is: he is one of the brains behind i-mode, a Web-browsing mobile application that sets a new standard for bringing content to mobile users.
Here, the walled garden has a much lower fence around it, and everyone -- broadcasters, publishers and amateurs -- can get their content out to mobiles.
"Content providers who really want to make money from mobiles spend money on making their content specific for mobiles," he said, but the restrictive barriers of the operator portal have been broken down.
Six years ago, Kamada's firm linked up with Japanese telecoms firm NTT DoCoMo to create i-mode, an alternative to the WAP (wireless application protocol) mobile Internet standard. When i-mode launched, the information superhighway was bustling with youthful vigor, and far-sighted mobile manufacturers knew that people would want to get Web-based information on their phones.
Inroads
Fast forward to this year, and i-mode has more than 42 million subscribers in Japan alone. What started as an untested joint venture now dominates its home ground -- and has valuable lessons to give the nascent European market, where it is beginning to make inroads.
It is launching services with networks including French operator Bouygues Telecom and Spain's Telefonica, and later this year it will make its first appearance in Britain under the banner of O2.
"There's a two-year advantage for the Japanese market," said Kamada, who believes that content is the most important thing 3G has to offer customers.
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