I was there starting my 3G consultancy business in 2001 when almost everybody suggested 3G was the biggest failure and many thought telecoms would not survive this investment (and its enormous licence fees). At the same time in October 2001 the first 3G network did go commercially live in Japan by my customer NTT DoCoMo.

Today the GSM Association reports that we've passed the 200 millionth 3G mobile phone subscriber. For those interested in the technological variants, 131 M are on the GSM evolution path basic 3G or WCDMA ie UMTS; another 5 M on its 3.5G variant, HSDPA. Meanwhile 65 M are on the CDMA2000 variant of 3G called EV-DO (and its faster cousin, Rev A). Note that CDMA2000 1x RTT is not considered true 3G by most 3G tech experts, but if you like that included, then there are another 288 M more.

But what does it mean? First, that out of the 3 B mobile phone subscriptions in the world, already 6.7% have migrated to 3G. Or more practically, out of the 1 B mobile phone owners who live in the industrialized world where almost all 3G subscribers are (China with its 500 million mobile phone owners hasn't even issued 3G licenses yet) already 20% of mobile phone owners have upgraded to 3G.

The leading countries are the usual suspects, South Korea has over 75% of all subscribers migrated to 3G and Japan has over 60%. But Italy is well along the way as well, with some 35% of its population using 3G phones.

It is important to note that just having a 3G phone and subscription doesn't mean we surf the wireless internet madly and upload and download videos etc. Most of the traffic on 3G is still basic voice and text messaging. But about 30% of 3G service revenues tends to be data, where it is about 20% of 2G networks. And a strong segment of the 3G data (and 3.5G data) is the use of 3G data cards/modems.

And talking about the revenues. My estimate of a 42 dollar ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) of 3G users worldwide gives us a global 3G revenue level of 100.8 B dollars (at annual service revenue level). Since 3G subscriber numbers keep growing, and this level was reached at mid-year, it means that 2007 is likely to have total 3G service revenues hit the 100 B dollar mark.

The total license fees paid by 3G mobile operators six, seven years ago was about 100 B dollars. Now only six years later the industry earns that amount every year (and growing fast). Typically 3G licenses are 15 years in duration. I hope this puts to rest any lingering rumours that 3G licenses somehow crippled this industry.

200 Million 3G phone subscriptions worldwide earning 100 B dollars. Not bad for a 6 year old..

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Tomi T Ahonen is a bestselling author and independent consultant in the emerging areas of next generation wireless who lectures at Oxford University and is seen annually at about 20 telecoms/IT conferences on six continents. His expertise includes the business, applications, services, partnering and marketing of wireless technologies. Tomi provides advanced wireless service marketing plan workshops and business case audits for operators/carriers; new service creation workshops; and value chain analysis for content providers and assists global media, IT and telecoms companies on their transitions to a digitally converged world.

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