Stepping Stone To 3G Could Prove Stumbling Block
By Jeremy Scott-Joynt
25-JUN-98
The ongoing argument over third generation mobile standards has taken a further twist with the announcement of high-speed data solutions for all three of today's main digital phone systems.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ Lucent promised that by late next year it would have data services capable of carrying information at between 144 and 300kbps available for cdmaOne networks.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ According to Scott Erickson, the company's Asia-Pacific vice president of wireless networks, the developments are a modification - backwards compatible, of course - of the existing cdmaOne standard.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ It constituted, he said, a kind of "two-and-a-half G" which both manufacturers and operators were relying to boost data takeup ahead of the introduction of 3G.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ And Ericsson, a key player in GSM and a pioneer in the 3G wideband CDMA air interface, said it had demonstrated in public a 384 kilobit per second multimedia service over a GSM network.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ Ericsson's solution to boosting GSM networks' capabilities - presently still mired at 9.8kbps - is EDGE ("enhanced data rates for GSM evolution"), which is intended as a stepping stone to fully-fledged 3G networks requiring the minimum of network adaptation on the part of operators.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ Following an announcement late last month, the European Telecoms Standards Institute (ETSI), the lead body for GSM standardization, reached an agreement with the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium - which oversees the evolution of the third digital standard, IS-136 or US TDMA - to jointly select EDGE as their stepping stone to 3G.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ This means that two out of the three now share an upgrade path. It also shows a solution has been found to one of the key 3G problem areas - how to combine, or at least interconnect, the two different network architectures: the GSM map network on the one hand, and the IS-41 network used by both cdmaOne and IS-136 on the other.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ But although the 2.5G developments are taken by their vendors as showing the way to 3G, some others - especially operators - say that EDGE and fast cdmaOne could paradoxically close the door on 3G rollouts.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ As Neil Montefiore, ceo of Singapore's Mobile One, told Total Telecom this week, operators are put off by the overly political infighting going on between the 3G standards lobbies, and in any case find it hard to see why anyone would need more than 300-odd kilobits per second. The 2.5G systems, he said, would probably suffice.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ The squabbling is thrown into sharp relief by arguments ongoing in the US, where the FCC and the State Department are trying to decide which 3G standards to put forward for the International Telecom Union's IMT-2000 3G certification process.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ The deadline is June 30, and the cdmaOne lobby is working hard to try to have GSM and thus W-CDMA shut out of the equation on the basis, so the lobby claims, that Europe's standards process is a "restraint of trade".
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ QualComm in particular is lobbying against GSM and in favor of government support for US vendors.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ Meanwhile, though, the North American GSM Alliance is busily throwing earlier comments from the CDMA Development Group (CDG) back in its face, in an attempt to make sure W-CDMA stays on the State Department's agenda.
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ Claiming that it wanted to let the marketplace decide - exactly the wording used in previous QualComm and CDG statements - the alliance's chairman and the ceo of GSM operator Aerial Communications, Don Warkentin, said that shutting out GSM would be "an abuse of government power".
ÿÿÿÿÿÿ "To be blunt," he went on, "the Department of State and the FCC have no business tilting the competitive playing field by favoring one US company over another US company investing in another technology." |
