3 Ireland’s launch – the fun begins

It’s kind of amusing to read over other people’s reactions to the launch of 3 in Ireland.
Compared to their initial launch on the European market the Irish one has been very low key.

Prior to the launch in Italy in 2002 the marketing spend was gigantic. Their marketing department had a pre-launch budget of 30 million euro.
What did they do with it?
Built brand image of course.
The fact that most Italians didn’t have a clue what the brand was going to be selling them didn’t really seem to matter.
If you asked an average Italian who “tre” were they wouldnt have known. They had seen the billboards, but you would have needed to be blind to miss them, but it wasn’t until early the following year that people really started to get their hands on the phones and actually understand what the service was supposed to offer them.
I was lucky, or unlucky, enough to be one of the first clients of 3, as a number of my friends worked for h3g, the Italian holding company. For a fixed sum per month I was given my NEC e606 and could hook it up to my pc as a modem, make video calls or try to make ordinary voice calls.
The problem as they soon discovered, were the basics. 3 had to rollout their own network across Italy at a time when the other telcos were backing away from UMTS. The likes of Telecom Italia and Vodafone were still in the testing phase, while 3 were putting in their equipment in the major urban centres.
They also had severe issues with their roaming on other networks, which resulted in loss of coverage in even the most builtup of areas. International agreements seem to have been an afterthought also, as you could not send SMS to some EU countries, whereas Turkey seemed to have signed.
A number of things seemed to be going on in the background.
The company was being bankrolled by Hutchinson Whampoa and had called in PWC Consulting (now IBM Global Services), to assist with the startup phases in Europe.
They setup base on the outskirts of Milan and headhunted as many staff as they could from existing telcos, such as Vodafone Italia and TIM
The field tests revealed a number of issues with the handsets, but it was already too late. They had to proceed. Of course even then they had issues supplying enough handsets to their first 500 odd clients.
The funny thing is that although the Italian network was ready well in advance, the launch date was put back due to delays with content providers in other countries, which meant that both the UK and Italy launched almost simultaneously. (I remember roaming on the UK network about 3 weeks before it actually went live 🙂 )
Tom and others have mentioned the launch of 3.
Although I may respect Tom and other people’s opinions about what 3 Ireland should or should not be doing I do get the distinct impression that they are being a little naive.
Tom – Maybe they are aware of boards.ie, maybe they aren’t. I sincerely doubt if they care, as they are not going to be easily influenced by posts on a bulletin board or on a blog. 3 Ireland is part of a much bigger company which has invested billions in 3G. They are working to a plan which is not going to be easily influenced by a few people whining on a blog or a bulletin board. I used to pay them good money. I should know.
If you take a look at what has happened with 3 in the Italian market in the last 3 years you may get some sort of insight. Do you honestly think that a company with allegations of antitrust and consumer groups on its heels is in the same league as your average Irish company?
3 may not be a magic number, but only when the dust truly settles on what could be a very strange year for the mobile industry in Ireland will anybody be really in a position to make any real judgement.