IT IS make or break time. Five years after European mobile operators spent billions on licences for third-generation technology, this year is regarded as the point in which its time could come.

A combination of sleek handsets, top quality graphics and a host of media and music companies lining up to get content into people’s pockets should take 3G mainstream.

Julian Hewett, an analyst at Ovum, says: “At present it is really only the early adopters that have the handsets. This year, as more people upgrade from their 2G phones, as a matter of course that will change and we’ll move from a few million people across Europe with 3G phones to tens of millions.

“With that critical mass and everything else like content and applications in place, then 3G’s time should come.”

Such expectation is likely to be the talk of this year’s 3GSM Congress.

For the 40,000 delegates the memories are all too raw of the early, embarrassing days of 3G.

After pinning hopes — and revenues — on 3G, and hyping it heavily to consumers, players such as Vodafone, Orange and O2 discovered that their technology was fraught with pitfalls.

The technology took far longer to develop than had been expected.

One executive famously relayed how the handsets were “hot enough to fry an egg on”. The costs of marketing and building the networks were huge and consumer demand was sluggish.

The presence at this year’s congress of MTV, the music channel, and Endemol, the TV production company behind Big Brother, suggests that they too can see the revenue potential in 3G phones.

One industry insider says that mobile operators have little option but to make 3G work — “and they will keep throwing money at it until it does”.

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