It will be interesting to see if the WCDMA standards can be produced on time for the June deadline.
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Release 4 has been "completed".
Release 5 (UTRA, HSDPA) is underway.
From my observations, there should be no problem "completing" Release 5 on time as well. The question is - what will the standard specification be worth?
Why?
3GPP standard specifications are constructed as political documents.
There are so many contributors, so many contributions, that it is impossible to test or confirm the science when constructing the specification. The composition of the standard is determined by a political process as determined by the respective voting powers of member cliques and groups.
I'm presently being emailed contributions for the next Working Group 2 RAN #21 meeting... There are dozens of "contributions" ---- being corrections and modifications for Release 4 - and even still Release 99.
3GPP is just now beginning to discuss how to "test" Release 4. So a testing procedure will now be agreed upon (through a political process) to test the viability of Release 4 - after the fact.
Yet they announce that Release 4 is complete.
What is the value of a "completed" 3GPP standard specification? By all indications, a little piss in a pot. (No doubt things were more manageable back in the GSM days when there were fewer cooks in the kitchen and comparatively few power brokers to wrestle..)
There should be no surprise that there are chronic UMTS problems in the field - and that the problems, and the corrections and modifications will continue..... month after month after month
And it is noteworthy to understand that the corrections and modifications receive that same scant scrutiny - through the same political process - as the original specification.
funny world....
It's appropriate to compare this to the 1xevdv development process underway in 3GPP2. The performance of all technology proposals, both foundation and component, will be cross confirmed by competing participants prior to consideration for inclusion. Even with far fewer players, the development process is tedious and time consuming. But the product will have tangible value when complete. Correspondingly, revisions to completed 3GPP2 standard specifications, like 1xevdo, are a microscopic fraction of the quantities proposed and required in 3GPP.
How long will it be until a viable, stable UMTS Release 4 exists?
Who can say. |
