The United States is four years behind Asia and two years behind Europe in wireless and mobile technologies, a senior partner of global consultancy firm Accenture has told Irish executives.
Mr Richard Siber, managing director of Accenture's global wirless communications practice, also predicted US mobile firms would not introduce next-generation services for three years.
In an interview before a keynote address at the "Making M-commerce a Business Reality" conference in Dublin, Mr Siber said the lack of long-term spectrum management in the US was a problem.
"The US will not catch up because it has no long-term spectrum management policy in place. It is still struggling to identify spectrum for next-generation wireless," he said.
A fundamental problem for wireless firms in the US was their inability to get access to spectrum that had been agreed as a world standard for next-generation mobile services, said Mr Siber.
These three frequencies - 700 megahertz, 1700 megahertz and 2500 megahertz - were agreed at a worldwide spectrum conference in Turkey almost two years ago.
Mr Siber said although US delegates to the conference lobbied for these spectrum allocations, current users of these frequencies would not give them up.
"TV broadcasters have the 700 megahertz frequency and, although they told the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] they would give it up after seven years, the price goes up every year. It's so high now its called Paxson's Ransom," he said.
The Department of Defence occupies the 1700 frequency and, following the September 11th attacks, it is unlikely it would consider moving, according to Mr Siber. The final 2500 frequency is mostly occupied by religious and educational broadcasters who use its for fixed-wireless services. The Vatican has told the FCC it doesn't want to let it go, he said.
Four auctions for spectrum had already been delayed and it now looked like new dates of June 2002 would be challenged by lawsuits, said Mr Siber.
He said, although Docomo had introduced the world's first third-generation (3G) service in October, the US would probably not set up full 3G services for four years.
Two US operators, Sprint and Verizon, may introduce services under the title of 3G next year but, in reality, they would be at speeds similar to general packet radio services. The technology that both firms will use to set up high-speed services in the US is called 1XRTT and is capable of speeds up to just 173 kilobytes per second.
The use of several competing technical standards such as CDMA, TDMA and GSM pose further difficulties for US mobile phone operators, said Mr Siber.
However, a recent decision by the FCC to lift a cap on spectrum ownership in the US may enable US firms to provide more seamless services. Previously, individual companies were only able to use 45 megahertz of spectrum, forcing the US market to be made up of lots of small wireless firms, according to Mr Siber.
"It is not unusual for consumers to have a choice of seven to 10 carriers and, in some cases due to resellers, up to 12," he said.
But the lifting of the ownership cap by 2003 should prompt a round of consolidation in the sector, Mr Siber added.
However, even in Europe, where mobile phone penetration is extremely high, m-commerce has not mushroomed into a multibillion dollar industry as previously forecast, he said.
"The poor user experience caused by small screens, slow speeds and WAP has slowed adoption," he said.
But the introduction of location-based services, better and faster infrastructure, and multimedia messaging should enable the m-commerce forecasts to be met within three years.
"Youth have embraced it and it is just a question of when critical mass is reached," he added.
Other speakers at the conference included Mr Bruno Degiovanni, head of wireless commerce, Visa International; Mr Stewart MacKinnon, managing director of Irish Payments Services Organisation; and Mr David Hooper, head of European mobile marketing at Microsoft.
