Technical Standard for IMT-2000 Major Headache
On the surface, everything seems to be straight and clearcut: In the course of the government handing out three licenses to provide the next generation mobile communications services, the technical standard is open, that is operators can choose which ever they want.
Now, as the government and its technical standard deliberation committee try to clarify matters and move IMT-2000 (International Mobile Telecommunication) forward, there is still much confusion.
When the government made its initial position public a few months ago, something unexpected, and something that it did not want, happened: All three licensees preferred the asynchronous European standard.
In the beginning, the government, or the Ministry of Information and Communication, thought that two of the three will go for cdma2000 (code division multiple access), which is the American platform furnished largely by Qualcomm, since there was the unspoken notion that this is what the government preferred.
With all three companies cautiously voicing their hopes of adopting CDMA-2000, the European asynchronous standard, equipment makers stepped in this time to say they would like cdma2000.
``Adopting cdma2000 saves service providers time and money in introducing their operation and equipment makers have renewed opportunities to target the America market,'' said one official of Samsung Electronics.
On the other hand, service providers _ which are certain to be SK Telecom, Korea Telecom and LG Telecom _ argue that choosing cdma2000 is abandoning 80 percent of the global market.
``In addition to the superiority in international roaming, IMT-2000 is certain to be used in a majority of the international market and this has to be taken into serious consideration,'' said one LG Telecom official.
But there are more elements to the debate. For one thing, SK Telecom has already launched the cdma2000 1X services, which represent the 2.5-generation technology which uses the American standard.
``For us, there is an obvious need to continue improving our services and this is coming in the form of the 2.5-generation technology and this is possible only with the synchronous method,'' said the SK Telecom official.
In fact, the other two companies, which are now specializing in personal communications service (PCS), are looking to follow suit with trial operations of the cdma2000 1X of their own this month.
Another point that has come to light is a recent report from the Seoul YMCA which showed that the adoption of the American standard is better for consumers.
``Obviously, the reality is that the synchronous standard is best for Korean consumers, especially with the 2.5-generation technology kicking in,'' said one YMCA official.
He went on to say that the use of the synchronous technology will help reduce cost in terms of the installation of facilities, including transmission stations, and speed up the process of introducing commercial services.
``There is really no argument on the part of consumers. Because we have the CDMA technology as the format stands now, it makes all the sense to continue building on their platform,'' the official said.
In the end, experts project, two companies will end up using cdma2000 with the remainder going with the European standard but everything is unclear until the verdict is in and the licenses are given out.
jakenho@koreatimes.co.kr
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