Most people in both markets had heard about 3G purely through word of mouth or personal research, which would tend to lead to the conclusion that there's a marketing issue behind the reactions we saw in the survey.

A key concern is the future. If people aren't buying Internet and content access today, then you have to ask how adoption of broadband access services such as 3G can be built. The technology roadmap is clear, but subscribers appear not to be aware of just how they can use the mobile services being offered to them today, let alone in future.

There's undoubtedly a disconnect here between mobile subscribers and service providers and it would appear to be related to the way that services such as these are being communicated to subscribers. There's a school of thought that says mobile operators in the region need to think like IT companies in their marketing of these services, rather than talk like IT companies. The opportunities for operators are huge, not just in revenue terms, but in differentiating themselves in the region's increasingly competitive markets.

I don't know if you realize this, but there are some researchers - doctors - who are giving this kind of drug to volunteers, to see what the effects are, and they're doing it the proper scientific way, in clean white hospital rooms, away from trees and flowers and the wind, and they're surprised at how many of the experiments turn sour. They've never taken any sort of psychedelic themselves, needless to say. Their volunteers - they're called 'subjects,' of course - are given mescaline or LSD and they're all opened up to their surroundings, very sensitive to color and light and other people's emotions, and what are they given to react to? Metal bed-frames and plaster walls, and an occasional white coat carrying a clipboard. Sterility. Most of them say afterward that they'll never do it again.

It's the same people who don't have the wherewithal to get out of Dodge.

We're just trying to help people and give them a fair amount of comfort and dignity.