Hutchison launched the first 3G service in Europe.(Britain and Italy) as a new operator "3". 3 doesn't have any baggage of the past and it has launched 3g infra afresh. Since its first launch, it has done so in many other countries. But, it has so far signed up only 3 lakhs in italy and around 1 lakh in britain. (in 7 months and much less than its target of 1m each). Meanwhile incumbent operator vodafone's new service "live"/tmobile's "t-zones" on 2.5G are aggressively bundling other mobile data services like photo messaging, games etc.. And already they have 2m subscribers overboard. Also the revenues of these subscribers are 10% more than their normal ones. ( so data revenues of more than 10%!!).

So the question is why 3G is still not active?
a) Bulky equipment, lost calls (due to problems in interop), battery life
b) Probly too early into the game wherin they had to reduce price of voice calls to compete with 2.5G operators. ( So from the USP of video, they gone to the USP of cheap voice!!)

Probably, the transition would happen not hyped as technology, but as per user needs.

Latest Update:
3 is giving away handsets free in Italy and in return users have to talk/video for 1 hour monthly. (Min of 30 Euros charge per month ). In Britain, they have the cheap voice calls strategy. Seemingly ARPU is 70 Euros per month compared to 35 for other operators.

Latest update (30th September 2003):
Even in Asia, 3G is not kicking off as thot initially. High prices (both handset and airtime) and poor quality of service being the reasons as usual. everybody is expecting the demand to pick up after 3 years ( normal time for upgrade). GPRS itself has not been strong and therefore mobile data is still to pick up. Cost of handsets - 500$ and around 4$ for 3 mts of video usage. (get the number of 3G subscribers). China - put off till 2004. what matters is pricing, quality of service and applications - doesn't matter if 3G or 2G. ( e.g: crush application).