By the end of 2002, there will be nearly three times as many 3G subscribers in the US than in all of Europe, according to Morgan Stanley.

The report predicts that by 2004, there will be 115m next generation wireless subscribers in the US, compared to only 35.8m in Europe. Over 65 per cent of all US mobile phone subscribers in 2004 will have a mobile phone capable of data rates similar to a dial-up modem compared to less than 11 per cent in Europe at the same time.

The major difference between the two regions lies in mobile technology standards, according to Emarketer.com. European operators are changing from their existing 2G GSM technology to 2.5G of GPRS and then 3G with W-CDMA.

However uptake of GPRS in Western Europe is still slow, due to a combination of factors including, the lack of GPRS handsets, initial high costs for data downloads, a lack of compelling data services and a downturn in the global wireless sector.

In the US, operators have adopted cdma2000 1x technology during the transition phase to 3G. The short-term benefit that cdma2000 1x operators will have over their GPRS counterparts is that the network upgrade provides them with an immediate increase in spectrum capacity