NTT in Japan has 54 million subscribers (51 percent of the market), 88 percent of these are already owner of the third generation mobiles or third generation air cards needfully for connecting their laptop to internet.

The latest cellular 2G, made of a particular technology called PDC (Personal Digital Cellular) developed specifically for the local market, was released in 2004 and already two years later, in 2006, the number of 3G users had surpassed those of the old technology.

The infrastructure of NTT WDCMA, moreover, was the first to become operational in 2001 and now, with the 4G licenses that the ministry of telecommunications in Japan already has in the tray, ready to be filled, Ntt are deciding to look forward and free up valuable bandwidth with which to improve the service offered by 3G. The nearly 7 million 2G customers will be led to new phones and new services in time to close all the old deals and old tariff profiles within three years from today.

The choice of NTT, however, seems not to have much to do with economic issues: the results presented in relation to the first nine months of its current fiscal year are more than solid (about 5 billion dollars). The choice of abandoning the 2G will undoubtedly have logistical implications that will save some maintenance, but above all it can continue to innovate in an area where for years, Japan is the leader in the development of air cards, mobile 3g and 4g communication.

On the contrary, it seems that the situation in the U.S. 3G has not yet reached an optimum level of efficiency, at least not in the opinion of users. A recent study by Gartner has revealed some dissatisfaction of consumers respect to benefits offered by their mobile connections, even about some promises in terms of speed: the company of the market analysis has therefore invited the ISPs to improve the performance of own devices, and users to revise downward their expectations.

Will be for this reason that the explosion made by record mobile broadband subscriptions in the first months of 2008 in the U.S. has stopped at the begin of this year. This does not seem to have stopped the plans of some providers (AT & T and Verizon for example) and hardware manufacturers. They want to focus their attention to the world of Netbook and air cards 3G connections. Others, like Motorola, will focus instead directly on LTE, a kind of intermediate step between 3G and 4G.