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Unless you're Qualcomm, Kylie Minogue, or a Brazilian soccer fan, probably the best thing that could be said about 2002 is that it's over. Indeed, between the economic crunch and the US-led war on terrorism, 2002 was never going to be a year to look forward to--so much so that around this time last year, when pundits traditionally make their yearly predictions for the upcoming year, this column spent more time ruminating on the things you WOULDN'T see in 2002.

Some were fairly obvious--LMDS rollouts, people shelling out for pay-per-view broadband Internet content, and incumbents happily providing cost-based interconnect on demand, for example. The expected lack of 3G rollouts might have also seemed like a no-brainer--at least if you only count W-CDMA as 3G, and if you only count W-CDMA launches with actual handsets.

If you count cdma2000 service launches, on the other hand, then 2002 was a 3G stunner. At the end of 2001, there were seven cdma2000 1x networks in the world. As of December 15, 2002, there were 27. Three of those have launched EV-DO services (albeit on a very limited trial basis). Here's a safe, can't-lose prediction for 2003: the CDMA Development Group PR team will spend the entire year milking those numbers dry.

Another probable bragging point for the CDG in 2003 will be China Unicom's CDMA network, which this column predicted would have a hard time of it. After a rough start, Unicom's CDMA subscriber base has already passed the 5 million mark.

Bluetooth was another surprise in 2002 in that you could actually find Bluetooth products on the shelves. There are over 300 such products on the street now--some of them even work well. If the prices start coming down to a reasonable level--2003 may well be Bluetooth's big year.

Some things, of course, never change--like security. Actually, thanks mainly to 9/11, security has taken on a new importance with just about every business with an email address. On the plus side, the telecoms industry is finally getting "best practices" security guidelines courtesy of the US FCC's Network Reliability and Interoperability Council. On the negative side, Microsoft has been steadily reporting new security flaws ever since it kicked off its Trustworthy Computing initiative.

The future just happened

And so much for 2002. The 2003 outlook for the telecoms industry isn't much more promising, though this will vary by sector. Views are--predictably--mixed. For every analyst who reckons that the worst is behind us--Mark Winther of IDC, for example, said in November that the telecom market is ready to rebound, and that next-gen wireless, VoIP and broadband technologies will be important components of that recovery--there are plenty of carriers and vendors out in the trenches who will believe it when they see it. And who can blame them?

This is the part where I'm supposed to spout off a list of technology trends to watch for in 2003, but honestly, I can't see the point. For one thing, it's all about services right now, not technology, especially since technology trends don't automatically translate into usage or cash flow, as broadband access (outside of Korea) and wireless data (outside Japan) have shown.

Besides, you already know which technologies will command the industry's attention this year. Most of them will be wireless. I've already mentioned two: Bluetooth and 3G. We are all going to see a bunch of new WCDMA rollouts in 2003--most of them from Hutchison Whampoa. We'll also probably see the world's first EDGE service by the end of the year and--if we're lucky--we may even see the world's first EDGE handset.

Either way, all of them are going to lose oodles of money for quite awhile, at least until the vendors release dual-mode GPRS/UMTS handsets with decent battery life. Likewise Wi-Fi is not going to be profitable for some time either, despite the fact that telcos have clued on to the possibilities of hotspots and roaming.

In the wired world, you may not see much in the way of Web-based services in 2003, but you'll see the building blocks being laid down with initiatives from Juniper Networks' MINT, IBM's e-business on demand and grid computing, and Datacraft's Applications Networks, to name but a few. You'll also see growing interest in managed security and IP-based services like VoIP and IP-VPNs. And, you may even see WDM make headway in the metro via cost-effective coarse WDM.

If nothing else, you'll probably seeing a lot of Kylie Minogue again.