Mobile Web: 38% Euro Usage by 2013

Analysts at Forrester Research say 38 percent of mobile phone users in Western Europe will use mobile Internet services by 2013. That's 125 million Europeans accessing the Web regularly from their mobile phone, triple the number that do so today.

As that happens, something will start happening with mobile advertising, no matter how undeveloped the art is at the moment. Forrester reports that 83 percent of marketers it surveyed recent believe mobile advertising will become more effective over the next three years, despite a finding that just seven percent of users "trust" mobile ads.

That's just the nature of the business these days. Communications service providers are in the midst of transformation efforts that require them to replace most of their current revenue with new sources. Do they--does anybody--have absolute crystal clear vision on precisely how all that will happen? No. Will it happen? Yes.

Is that quite a lot of uncertainty? Yes. But will service providers get there? Yes. In that regard, the communications business is no different than lots of other businesses these days. Most of the products lots of companies will be selling in 10 years haven't been invented yet.