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The new mobile phone data service GPRS launched commercially by dozens of wireless telecoms operators has been slow to take off, with just one million Europeans using it at the end of 2001, according to a study released on Thursday.

GPRS, or general packet radio network, is the successor to the global system for mobile communications (GSM) network standard, and is seen as important for a wireless industry in desperate need of new revenues from data services such as email and messaging, to offset declining voice telephone revenues.

British research group Analysys found that the mobile telecoms carriers have struggled to get their services right in the first 12 months since the launch of the new GPRS networks.

So far, they have failed to offer compelling services at the right price, which explains why only one million Europeans have signed up for the service, although 3.3 million have GPRS-capable handsets that could receive it.

Operators could have had 2.5 times as many subscribers, had they been more convincing in developing and selling GPRS services, said analyst Katrina Bond.

"At the very least, they should review the language they use to brand and promote these services, drop references to GPRS, WAP (wireless application protocol) and other technical terms, and engage their customers with something more imaginative," she said.

Operators must give the same priority to GPRS traffic as they do to GSM and quickly bring attractive handsets to the market with an easy billing system if they want to grow the number of European GPRS customers to 40 million by the end of 2003, she added.

These customers, 13 percent of total subscribers, would then generate 26 percent of all mobile data revenues.

GPRS, designed to give its users faster and always-on connection to the Internet, has been launched in Europe where mobile phone penetration has reached levels of around 70 percent in most countries, and slowing new subscriber growth has forced operators to look for new revenues streams such as data.

GPRS is an enhancement to the GSM network standard. It is seen as a stepping stone to 3G technologies which offer even more sophisticated data and video-streaming services.