3G - New lease of life for Telcos

3G may provide a shot in the arm for Telcos with services that people really pay for unlike the ones we have seen in the recent past. Skype and Youtube subscribe to free service philosophy; a model that makes generating revenue quite challenging. Even for voice services like Vonage and SunRocket with lower margins and ever increasing acquisition costs it's simply not worth it. Super growth has been seen in the simplest service: SMS. 3G of course captalizes on that formula, simple useful services that people will really pay for. MMS is the 3G version for SMS.
There are some lessons to be learnt from 3G deployments in Japan. Although Japan is not an ideal global trendsetter, at a macro level it is the next-hot-technology barometer. Japanese (and Korean) are indeed harnessing power of 3G with their cell phones replacing wallets and going as far as replacing car/home keys! E-commerce and wireless marriage is already conjuring wonders here creating billions of dollars of market. Other markets, including the archaic US's must follow by adopting models that work more locally whether it is simple service like music download or complex services like location based services.