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Mobile communications services are becoming a life support machine for society, according to Vodafone Group's Life President. Sir Christopher Gent, who is credited with turning what was a medium sized UK firm into the largest cellular network operator in the world, shared his thoughts on mobile communications during the Hinton Lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineers.

A quarter of all mobile phone users worldwide are served by networks that Vodafone has involvement with; so Sir Christopher speaks with knowledge when he says that "mobile services meet a basic human need--the ability to communicate with anyone, anytime and any place on earth."

Now that he's a pensioner he says he won't hold back with his opinions, and he's not joking; especially when he compares the mobile phone to television or the motor car in its significance in transforming people's lives. But when he talks of a life support system, in one instance he is also quite literal. One of the leading edge mobile developments he uses to illustrate his point is a Type 1 diabetes monitoring service via GPRS.

Sir Christopher predicts that the future growth of mobile telephony will be greater than that which we have already seen. "By the end of the decade the number of mobile phone users will double--think of China with millions of new subscribers every month, or the USA which has only half the penetration rate of Italy."

And he believes that with lower call charges, mobile telephony will take over from fixed line services. Evidence of this comes from the USA, where cheap call charges mean average monthly usage is 500 minutes--twice that of Europe. But to kick-start data services, there needs to be ease of use and a standardised customer experience on different handsets. He says that the new trend to make handset manufacturers meet operators' specifications, which he says Vodafone set with Vodafone Live, is helping to achieve this.

No four minute miles

Handset manufacturers aren't the only group he hopes will fall into line. Government has a part to play in the further development of mobile services and so far he thinks Europe's politicians haven't performed that well. 3G licence auctions, especially in Europe, played a significant part in the bursting of the telecoms bubble. In particular, the British and German governments "distorted the rules of their auctions in order to maximise their returns."

As a result he says that Deutsche Telecom's shareholders "lost more value than the German government made from the 3G licence."

Compare this to his view on the Japanese--who in their initial handout of 3G licences decided not to laden their operators with debt. "Europe is now 18 months behind Japan because of the transfer from investors to taxpayers."

Sir Christopher sees the development of mobile services as a marathon, not a sprint. So he is decidedly lukewarm about DoCoMo's development of 4G high bit rate applications, suugesting that the strategy is in place because the operator wants the Japanese government to give it more spectrum.

Right now he wants the 3G critics to shut up, and talk to turn to the mobile data technologies and services that are already proving that 3G works--such as 3G from DoCoMo and 2.5G from J-phone (a Vodafone subsidiary) in Japan.

"The market must be primed with new services and increased progressively. Don't forget that we had these same problems when we were introducing GSM."

But GSM turned out to be the making of Vodafone--it allowed international roaming and the ubiquity which Sir Christopher says is the real value for mobile customers.