I am not one of the fans of 3G anyway, but with Brendan Murtagh taking over liabilities (Euro 45M) as well as assets I think he may well have a plan for its future : http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=IRELAND-qqqm=news-qqqid=18476-qqqx=1.asp

Smart Telecom can do many things commercially in its market and I am sure the people working there need the good support of somebody like Brendan to look after their interests and ensure that they remain gainfully employed and that Smart can move on and become stronger from this. Do not forget that this is about people/workforce as well as a company, they have put in the effort in building the business and we need to respect what is happening when somebody bails out a company.

Back to 3G. 3G is just wireless spectrum that just so happens to be licensed [expensively]. My thoughts are towards the unlicensed spectrum, for example Wimax at 5.2/5.3 GHz which in many countries is unlicensed, allowing disruptive companies to come in and offer services similar to Wi-Fi but with more bandwidth and less overhead costs.

OK, so what has this got to do with mobile phones? Well, look at some of the manufacturers now moving toward WiFi plus GSM/GPRS/3G enabled phones allowing freedom for the customer and the slew of technology companies, who are, at this current time working on WiMax enabled tech. for mobile devices and you have the makings of a bit of disruption to the licensing fees paid by the big boys for a bit of spectrum.

The customer does not care about wireless frequencies, they care about – will Vodafone charge me £3 for a video on my phone or do I go and use wireless gootube and see the video on my Wimax enabled GPRS phone for free.

Food for thought……………………..

PS Ewan, do you have an equity card?……………………………… Worth getting one with a voice like that :0)

steve