The race is intensifying among telcos fighting to deliver next-generation high-speed mobile internet technology.

However, companies will face some hard choices if they are to back the right horse in what is turning into a hard-fought race.

Orange announced last week that it was preparing to deploy its Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) service in October and its High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data (HSCSD) in November.

The operator is spending £10m to develop and deploy HSCSD. The technology will enhance Orange's existing circuit switch networking and allow it to boost its capacities from the current 9.6Kbps speeds to 28.8Kbps. By using compression techniques, it says it can achieve speeds as high as 57.6Kbps. Such speeds will allow it to support video calls and other bandwidth-hungry applications.

But other, rival, operators have decided to concentrate on developing GSM packet radio system (GPRS) trials. Vodafone, Cellnet, One2One and Orange are all planning to deploy GPRS, which will achieve bandwidths of up to 171.2Kbps within the next year.

A tale of two technologies

Nigel Deighton, mobile analyst for Gartner Group, said that it?s unclear which technology will win out.

"It seems that HSCSD will be less popular than GPRS but it has some advantages. I would have expected that more operators would go to HSCSD first and then move on to GPRS. Instead, GPRS will end up whetting users? appetite for HSCSD capabilities."

The user experience associated with the two technologies will be a major differentiator. Deighton said, "HSCSD users will have to wait for about the same amount of time as dial-up users to access their data services. This will create an extra time overhead. It will be different to GPRS, which could be always on with charges being based on the number of packets sent rather than the time taken to make calls."

Unlike GPRS users however, Deighton explained that HSCSD customers will have reserved bandwidth channels. With GPRS, the bandwidth is shared so that as the number of users increases, the available bandwidth is correspondingly reduced.

Stuart Scott, head of Orange's internet product group, said, "There is no way that GPRS will be able to guarantee access times, whereas with high speed we'll be able to guarantee a log-on between 5 and 10 seconds."

Radio control

The first HSCSD terminals will come in the form of PC radio cards that can run off a laptop and act as a phone as well as a connection for internet or email access. These will be followed by Nokia handsets which can be used separately as a voice phone or attached to a PDA or laptop for high-speed data connections.

So, if users want to avail themselves of Orange's WAP services, they will have to buy a special handset costing between £100 and £200. The HSCSD handset will require another investment again. Late next year Orange expects to offer services on WAP phones with HSCSD capability.Although Orange claims that its business customers have been pressurising it to deploy HSCSD services, few will be keen to invest in new handsets several times a year.But Scott said, "The strongest pull for HSCSD is from the business market. They want the service sooner rather than later."

Orange will deploy HSCSD onto its commercial network next month, and it will launch a commercial service in November.