The question is how long will it increase the TDMA life span.
Molly, a lot of people smarter than you and I are betting billions of dollars that TDMA will be around for the decade and will be part of the seamless integration between fixed and mobile wireless that will be introduced, WHEN IT MAKES ECONOMIC SENSE, along the de facto ugprade path -- 2g TDMA/GSM to 2.5g GPRS or EDGE or 3g WCDMA then 4g. Lucent's BLAST technology works at the cutting edge and at the lagging edge in any event.
IDC's Brian Kiernan is chairing the IEEE fixed wireless task force that has this kind of integration in mind. To assess Brian's qualifications, Darrell or Jim can tell you more about IDC's installed base of about 1.5-2.0 million subscribers in 20 countries (including the USA) for its TDMA-based WLL (wireless local loop) Ultraphone.
Th Ultraphone was clearly an underperformer but it is noteworthy in the way flexibility was engineered into this fixed wireless system. One configuration that was interesting to me was the way the Ultraphone configuration that allowed it to be used in emergency or disaster situations, much like battlefields where a relief team comes into an area and quickly establishes communication links in an area with downed infrastructure or no teledensity in order to facilitate the disaster relief effort.
That flexibility is one hallmark of IDC's system design philosophy that carried over to the fixed version of B-CDMA which generated support from the likes of Alcatel, Siemens and Samsung before, again, it got caught up in the events that led up to IMT-2000. As you can check for yourself, Samsung and IDC still have a working fixed BCDMA WLL in the Guandong province that is very promising in a large country like China with 1.2, 1.3 billion people and that kind of rural/urban considerations.
One can go to the IBM Patent Server or the USPTO to judge the importance of IDC's CDMA patents. It is noteworthy, however, to point out that Donald L. Schilling was responsible for much of the early BCDMA development work that coupled with IDC's seminal TDMA work constituted the
solid foundations for the continuing developmental work at IDC that has, to date, produced modular IPR blocks that have been synthesized in a 2nd generation SOC (system-on-a-chip) via Texas Instruments that integrates the RISC processor, the DSP and the Modem (modulator-demodulator) functions.
Donald L. Schilling, Professor Emeritus, City College of New York, USA and CEO, SCS InfoCom Wireless Communications in the 21st Century ð Applications and Technologies
Donald L. Schilling was Chairman of the Board of Directors of Golden Bridge Technology,Inc. from 1996-April 1998 where as Chairman of TIA 46.1, he led the development and standardization of W-CDMA. Prior to that he was Vice Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President of InterDigital Communications Corporation where he invented and led the development of Broadband-CDMA, and began the field of PCS in the U.S.A. (Wideband-CDMA, the generic form of B-CDMA, is being standardized for 3G systems by TIA and ITU.) Dr. Schilling is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at the City College of New York. Dr. Schilling retired, in May 1992, as the Herbert G. Kayser Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at the City College of the City University of New York. Dr. Schilling has made many notable contributions in WCDMA, spread spectrum communications systems, FM, phase-locked systems, meteor burst communications systems and HF systems. His design of an adaptive delta modulator is used on the Space Shuttle. Dr. Schilling has co-authored twelve textbooks, more than 200 papers and holds more than 50 patents, in telecommunications and electronics. In 1998, Dr. Schilling was awarded IEEE COMSOC's prestigious ARMSTRONG Award for his contributions to CDMA and to the wireless world it is creating.
comsoc.org
Note that the IEEE, a society of his peers, has seen fit to award Schilling with the Armstrong award for his contributions to CDMA.
Perhaps, verifying these leads on your own will help you understand why the Nokia and many others believe that there are alternatives to QCOM's technolgy and better paths to 3g WCDMA. IDC has TDMA, CDMA and SOC skillsets developed within a coherent system design discipline that makes it a very compelling alternative or complement to QCOM especially since IDC is willing to respect the formidable consensus that led to the 3g Patent Platform.
If you look at the nature of the patent wars percolating all over the technology front, you will find that this structure is not only common-sensical but it will also become increasingly necessary to insulate manufacturers and carriers (EBITDA businesses) from debilitating IPR wars and shareholder lawsuits the can impede the deregulatory processes in global telecommunications (one of the single largest expense to corporations and consumers globally) that many believe are essential to the export of the kind of economic dynamism in the USA throughout the world. In any event, 500,000 or so handsets are sold every day, and the unassailable logic of that kind of scale economics should be evident enough and heavily influence the allocation of scarce corporate resources in an ultra-competitive environment.
Lastly, here is a list of the 7 WCDMA trials going on around the world compared to only 1 CDMA2000 trial in South Korea. Note the absence of Finland and the tight-lipped nature of Nokia PR regarding their plans.
1) China - Nokia (WCDMA)
2) UK - Ericsson/Vodaphone (WCDMA), BT (WCDMA)
3) Japan - NTT Docomo (WCDMA)
4) Thailand - NEC (WCDMA)
5) Canada - GSM Alliance, TIW, Nortel (WCDMA)
6) Malaysia - NTT Docomo (WCDMA)
itu.int |
