Service Providers in the Information Industry – Demand for UMTS Lower Than That for W-LAN

Following a three-year delay, German mobile network operators will this year launch their UMTS networks. Network providers assume that demand will largely originate from business customers who wish, for example, to connect to corporate intranet via their netbooks during business trips. The wireless local area network (W-LAN), currently considered the greatest competitor of this technology, is, however, rapidly expanding.

This trend has been confirmed by the quarterly ZEW/Creditreform study carried out among service providers in the information industry. A proportion of IT-related service providers, which are responsible for 10 per cent of all turnover in the sector, stated that they planned to make use of UMTS in 2004. In contrast, only around 50 per cent of these firms plan to implement W-LAN.

This is the outcome of a business survey carried out amongst German IT-related service providers, conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, and the credit reference agency Creditreform, Neuss, in March and April 2004. Around 1,100 companies participated in the survey. The sector of IT-related service providers includes Information and Communication Technology (ICT) service providers (firms providing computer service and leasing, ICT-specialised trade as well as telecommunication services), as well as knowledge-intensive service providers (firms in the branches of tax consultancy and accounting, management consultancy, architecture, technical consultancy and planning, research and development, as well as advertising).

The highest proportion of companies planning to use UMTS in 2004, are architects offices (35 per cent). Telecommunications service providers who intend to apply UMTS technology accounted for about 20 per cent of the sector’s total turnover. In the case of business consultancies, this share totals 17 per cent. For the other sub-sectors of the information industry, this technology will be of only minor importance in 2004. Research and development businesses, technical consultancies and planners, as well as ICT trading firms showed particular interest in the use of W-LAN.

Contact

Dr. Margit Vanberg, E-mail: vanberg@zew.de