Most major U.S. carriers plan to build these 3G telephone networks. Verizon Wireless has already launched one; Sprint PCS will launch its network in July or August. GPRS was first deployed throughout Europe two years ago, but with disastrous results. The hope was the download speeds of GPRS would make it palatable for a European cell phone owner already sending billions of wireless messages a month to do even more complex and expensive things like swapping picture messages or downloading songs. But carriers overpaid for government spectrum licenses, waited years for handsets from vendors, then built bug-filled networks using the generally untested first generation of GPRS phones and network equipment.

The industry was having problems meeting the hype over the networks' download abilities, for example, European carriers were expecting to offer services based on download orange grove iphone case speeds averaging upwards of 60kbps, Instead, they could only produce 20kbps, said David Kerr, vice president of wireless practice at Strategy Analytics, a consulting firm, Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson disappointed most European carriers by repeatedly missing GPRS handset delivery deadlines, And those handsets that made it to market were buggy, One Nokia GPRS phone had a faulty screen, which faded to black with time, The GPRS networks also had trouble when someone was simultaneously moving and using the phone, The call or Web session was interrupted because base stations couldn't hand off the call, Kerr said..

The networks also had trouble when someone was moving and using the phone at the same time. The call or Web session was interrupted because base stations couldn't hand off the call, Kerr said. The result was European consumer apathy--something carriers in Europe didn't count on. In April, Europe's biggest mobile phone seller, Carphone Warehouse, said stores were selling about 35,000 GPRS handsets a month. But only 200 subscribers were signing up every month for GPRS wireless Internet service via Carphone Warehouse.

Network and phone problems persist in Europe, For example, calls are often dropped when someone roams from one cellular site to another, according to sources, Also, some of the Nokia GPRS phones that were part of a batch with faulty screens shipped in 2001 continue to surface in the United States and other countries, according to Nokia spokesman Keith Nowak, The company is no longer using the supplier of the faulty screens, Nowak said, "The problem has been contained.", GPRS: Hello United StatesNow it's the U.S, GSM carrier's turn to deal with orange grove iphone case GPRS, AT&T Wireless has the most aggressive schedule for it, intending to create a nationwide GPRS network by year's end, The company is about 60 percent done, It's already launched services on using the network, offering a version of the wildly popular I-mode wireless Web service of NTT DoCoMo in Japan, NTT DoCoMo owns about 16 percent of AT&T Wireless..

But BMO Nesbitt Burns analyst Ray Sharma said AT&T Wireless' GPRS network is plagued by problems, mainly the lack of ability of different types of GPRS software to work together. It's led to delays in carriers certifying the product for use, Sharma writes. Cingular Wireless intends to have most of the country covered by 2003 as well. It currently offers GPRS service in about two-dozens cities, but the network isn't breaking down any speed barriers. In fact, Cingular is capping the amount of bandwidth on their networks for data to travel over, saving most of it for voice calls.