This is a bit old, but it bears repeating, as it is a fairly good overview of where things
are going.
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(pulled from Tele.Com)
The Book of Genesis
How complicated is standards development? Witness the troubled genesis of
third-generation (3G) mobile standards for systems that may begin operating over
the next few years.
3G mobile systems are aimed at enabling a true convergence of wireless and the
Internet, including features such as higher-speed Internet access, multimedia
access and global roaming. Work on system standards began more than a decade
ago. That's when Japan, under pressure because of its own wireless capacity
problems, took the first step in the 15-year 3G standardization process by
promoting 3G wireless standards within the International Telecommunication Union
(ITU).
"The Ministry of Telecommunications in Japan decided the only way new spectrum
could be allocated would be through a third-generation system," says John Marinho,
technology director in Lucent Technologies' Wireless Networks Group and chairman
of the Telecommunications Industry Association's TR-45 engineering committee,
which develops performance, compatibility, interoperability and service standards for
certain mobile and personal communications services (PCS).
With prodding from Japan, the ITU went to work on the specifications that later
became known as the ITU's International Mobile Telecommunications 2000
(IMT-2000) initiative.
While the ITU was immersed in developing 3G standards, the second generation of
wireless telephony--digital, rather than first-generation analog--developed quickly in
the competitive marketplace. Operators in the United States and Europe built their
own competing second-generation (2G) systems, including the switches, base
stations, platform infrastructure and wireless devices to support them. These
extensive investments set the stage for three groups to battle it out for supremacy in
the 3G war--those behind the U.S. version of time-division multiple access (TDMA),
competing flavors of code-division multiple access (CDMA) and Europe's global
system for mobile communication (GSM).
Further complicating the picture was a separate, years-old battle between
Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego) and L.M. Ericsson AB (Stockholm) over intellectual
property rights to wireless technologies that form the foundation of the 3G
standards. That was settled in March, but not without the personal intervention of
ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi and increasing pressure from Europe and
Japan, which teamed up to lobby for a faster rollout of 3G than the United States
wanted. Utsumi was not alone in pressuring for cooperation on standards. The U.S.
government reminded the European Commission this summer that Europe had
promised the World Trade Organization (WTO) it would respect technology-neutral
3G licensing. Europe had initially indicated it wanted only wideband CDMA
(W-CDMA) as its 3G standard and would unilaterally implement it. But U.S.
Secretary of Commerce William Daley and U.S. Trade Representative Charlene
Barshefsky issued a letter stating that the United States will oppose any of the 15
European Union member states' licensing procedures that fail to include all forms of
the 3G standards.
But that's getting ahead of the story.
When the ITU solicited proposals for a 3G wireless system in early 1997,
second-generation wireless operators discovered they already met about 85 percent
of the requirements. Among those remaining were the critical high-speed data rates
needed for better Internet and multimedia capabilities.
Some participants in the process may have gotten carried away in their zeal for high
data rates at high rates of mobility. One requirement calls for data rates of 144
kbit/s at 500 kilometers an hour--the speed of a bullet train in Japan. Another
specifies data traveling at 1,500 kilometers an hour--the speed of a jet aircraft.
Yes, standards-building is a consensus process, but what killer application will
require these high speeds of 3G? asked some of the participants. That question
remains unanswered, especially when road warriors can download maps wirelessly
at 28 kbit/s today. On the other hand, the pedestrian data rate specifies a more
reasonable wireless transmission at 384-kbit/s speeds--40 times today's GSM
rate--at 3 kilometers an hour. And the indoor rate at 2 Mbit/s is already exceeded by
wireless local-area networks (LANs) in the U.S. market.
Meanwhile, a conflict over which flavor of CDMA to use with 3G is being addressed.
The Operators Harmonization Group (OHG), which represents most of the potential
3G service providers worldwide, last May reiterated its support of a common global
specification for the different CDMA-based systems vying for 3G supremacy. The
OHG's Harmonized Global 3G document provides a technical framework to mold a
single, integrated 3G CDMA specification out of the separate W-CDMA and
cdma2000 proposals offered to the ITU. The framework is supported by the
TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD), made up of senior U.S. and European
industry executives and gave everyone something to take home. It included the
direct-spread solution to satisfy the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP);
the multicarrier solution to satisfy 3GPP2 and ensure backward compatibility; and
the encouragement of further harmonization via a common time-division duplex
mode.
There's even more work going on in parallel with this. The Third Generation
Partnership Projects (3GPP and 3GPP2) are working to ensure that all CDMA
modes of the IMT-2000 air interfaces are compatible with both the ANSI-41 and the
GSM Multiple Applications Part (MAP) core networks. The OHG wants the CDMA
communities to ensure that the ANSI-41 and GSM MAP networks talk to one
another so that data records and other information can be exchanged, further
facilitating roaming. The TDMA proponents under UWC-136 have united ANSI-41 for
circuit-switched services and GSM for packet-switched services, and are working to
unify the two networks over time, says Paul Meche, former chairman of the Global
TDMA Forum and director of new systems technologies at Nokia Mobile Phones
Inc. (Espoo, Finland).
The TDMA proponents also have defined interworking functions for basic call delivery
services and are working to incorporate enhanced functions such as Short Message
Service (SMS) and calling line ID, he says.
The OHG also is recommending that 3GPP and 3GPP2 consider merging no later
than December 2000 to focus on developing a unified core 3G network, and to
ensure that the radio transmission technologies and their associated protocol layers
work together.
Even all this doesn't close the book on 3G's genesis. The harmonization of the radio
transmission technologies still must be approved by the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the American National Standards
Institute (ANSI) and Japanese and Chinese standards bodies. And then there's the
licensing of spectrum for 3G. European Union members want to have a scheme for
3G operator licensing by Jan. 1, 2000, to prepare for service introductions starting in
January 2002. Like standardization, licensing is a complex challenge--enough to fill
another book. |
