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From the July 5, 1999, issue of Wireless Week
Plugging 3G Into The IP Network
By Brad Smith
Like the black sheep that gets no familial respect, the network backbone has been ignored in all the talk about third-generation
technologies. That's been true despite the announcement last month on the formation of a new industry group called 3G.IP to
focus attention on what may be the essential ingredient of future wireless technologies.
Members of the new 3G.IP focus group, brought together by AT&T Wireless Services Inc., held their first meeting in Seattle at
the end of June and plan a series of meetings to forge some interim standards by the end of 1999. The next meeting is
scheduled in Norway in a few weeks.
Their effort likely will help 3G and its multimedia capabilities become a reality sooner than it might have otherwise. Open
network standards could be ready next year for carriers using time division multiple access and global system for mobile
communications technologies, with trials starting in 2001.
The 3G.IP focus group, which includes several TDMA and GSM carriers and their principal infrastructure vendors, was
formed to work on Internet protocol network standards based on the evolving general packet radio service and EDGE
(enhanced data for global evolution) technologies. The ultimate goal is to bring about a convergence of TDMA and GSM under
3G's harmonized code division multiple access air interface on IP networks.
AT&T Wireless, the leading proponent of the 3G.IP group, was concerned that the industry was moving too slowly on the
network standards necessary for 3G, according to Hans Andersson, the carrier's director of network architecture. AT&T
Wireless and like-minded carriers in North America and Europe pushed to form the group with several key vendors.
He said AT&T Wireless thinks the focus group's work can expedite by two years the implementation of 3G over an IP
network. That's because the focus group will encourage the sharing of work
already done and stimulate new approaches and solutions, he said.
Besides AT&T Wireless, the carriers involved with the 3G.IP focus group are British Telecommunications plc, Rogers Cantel
Inc. of Canada, Telenor AS of Norway and Telecom Italia Mobile. The vendors include Ericsson Inc., Lucent Technologies
Inc., Nokia Corp. and Nortel Networks.
The membership--which does not include such vendors as Motorola Inc. nor any other U.S. carrier--may change in the future
but Andersson said the initial list included the vendors carriers have been working with the most.
In March, AT&T Wireless signed a four-year, $1 billion contract to buy network infrastructure equipment from Lucent as the
carrier evolves its network for next-generation services.
Brian Bolliger, Lucent's director of wireless market strategy, said the recent debates over 3G air interfaces and such intricacies
as chip rates missed the point about future wireless services. The network itself is the key, he said, and the 3G.IP focus group
will broaden the work done on standards that will be necessary.
Bolliger said the focus group's work may not make 3G's future arrive sooner, but that the network standards will mean a
speedier and more pervasive evolution once it begins.
One of the challenges for the group, he said, will be applying IP network protocols to a wireless environment. This is especially
important for quality-of-service issues with voice-over-IP and managing the delays inherent in current Internet standards.
Girish Patel, wireless standards director for Nortel, said the focus group expects to have some interim network standards
established by the end of the year that include both circuit-switched and packet data elements. A complete set of IP network
standards should be finished by the end of 2000, with network trials the following year.
"Right now the 3G partnership project working on evolution of the GSM standards for 3G has been focusing on the near-term
objective of putting wideband CDMA access onto the network," Patel said. "The focus that is needed is to get some hooks in
place so that you would have a wireless IP network. That was the carriers' concern as well as ours."
Without the IP network standards, Patel said, 3G essentially would be an access technology looking for a network connection.
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