field of dreams?

The video clip series “24 Conspiracy” was created by Fox TV for V CAST. Verizon also has signed content deals with well-known brands like “Sesame Street.” And the operator is banking on games like “AMF Bowling.”

JAPANESE TEENAGERS HAVE LONG BEEN playing interactive 3-D games and doing real-time video chat on their mobile handsets, but the door to 3G has just opened to U.S. consumers with Verizon Wireless’ launch last month of the V CAST suite of consumer mobile broadband services for its 3G, EV-DO network.

While other carriers like AT&T and Sprint also have launched 3G services, other 3G offers to date have targeted business as opposed to residential users.

That may be, at least in part, because some believe 3G services will be a harder sell with consumers in the United States, where most downtime is spent in the car, or at the home or office where a computer or television is available, rather than walking or riding a train.

The successful rollout of 3G services for consumers here hinges on meeting demand and setting appropriate expectations. “You have to meet a market need, and 98.8 percent of revenue in wireless here is people making phone calls and using text-type services, if that tells you anything,” says Mark Willingham, vice president of marketing for HeyAnita Inc., creator of the Rapid Message Service, an application that lets users shoot audio messages back and forth in the exact same way they would use text messaging. While the Yankee Group reported steady increases in 2004 of wireless data use and awareness in the United States, text messaging was the most widely available and used service, followed by ringtone downloads.

In a series of focus groups with people ages 17 to 60, HeyAnita found users are distrustful that the more whiz-bang features will work as promised. “Most have camera phones, but don’t send pictures,” Willingham says. “The longer they had the phone, the less likely they were to use that function, because they can only send out to certain people. They instead use it to put a picture of the person on the phone so it pops up when they call. This is amazing, considering all the money having been spent on this technology for consumers.”

But Bill Stone, vice president of marketing at Verizon Wireless, says the operator finally has seen a breakthrough in consumer acceptance of data applications. “The wireless data business is significantly growing for us, and we’ve seen a maturation of broadband in general as a category,” he says. “The penetration of 3G services will hinge on those things that are simple and easy to understand, and we think we’ve accomplished that,” adds Stone.

One advantage, he says, is having Microsoft’s Windows Media Player embedded on devices. “That’s an important enabler of the technology since consumers are already familiar with the system,” he says.

Verizon is serving up simple pricing and applications. For an additional flat fee of $15 per month, customers with EV-DO-enabled handsets will get unlimited access to 300-plus, two- to five-minute video clips per day, along with unlimited browsing on the Verizon Wireless news and information Web service. Premium content — including music videos, 3-D gaming and other video-on-demand clips — is available for an additional charge.

The carrier has gained confidence with two trials in San Diego and Washington, D.C., in 2004. “We have content specifically created for the mobile device,” says John Stratton, vice president and chief marketing officer of Verizon Wireless. Verizon’s 3G mobile EV-DO network now is live in 30-plus cities in the United States, with 60 markets expected by the end of 2005.

“Taking a television program and moving it to a mobile device isn’t that compelling. And gaming is a tremendous seller now, even without 3G, so that will grow. People are always looking to kill time.”

More intriguing offerings will launch over the course of the year, although the carrier hasn’t divulged details. “Right now these are streaming services, with no specific memory implications,” says Stratton. “Handsets will have expandable memory capabilities as demands on the devices grow.”

Some say users are hostages to the types of phones they own since collaborative services only work between like devices — a potential market obstacle. “The operators do have a certain measure of control,” says Brough Turner, senior vice president, CTO and co-founder of NMS Communications, a component and board manufacturer in the wireless space that recently entered the software realm with the Vision software platform for live video telephony and Mobile Place, a content management platform. “If there were no competition, then they would have a complete walled garden, and you wouldn’t be able to send pictures anywhere without paying a price. But when one operator went from per-minute pricing to offering buckets of minutes, the whole market flipped in a year. As soon as someone gets device-neutral services out there, the market will flip again. The handset issue may slow 3G down for a year or two, but by 2007 and 2008, all of this will be behind us. They can’t count on a network lock forever.”

Even so, Verizon has deployed three new V CAST-ready devices with a high-resolution camera with zoom function, speakerphone and full-color digital video display. Stone says he sees no problems with communications being limited to users with these specific handsets, while Stratton points to the viral aspect of wireless adoption. “It’s in our best interest to get as many of these devices as possible in people’s hands so they can access the services,” he says. By the end of the year, he predicts, EV-DO handsets will claim a large minority, if not a majority, of phones purchased.

Verizon Wireless, whose network infrastructure vendors are Lucent Technologies Inc. and Nortel Networks Ltd., has earmarked $1 billion to roll out EV-DO service over the next two years. The company’s handset vendors include LG Mobile Phones, Samsung Telecommunications America and UTStarcom Personal Communications.