By Peggy Albright
SAN FRANCISCO?Bernd Eylert, chairman of the London-based UMTS Forum, was in town earlier this month, lamenting
the limited use of his GSM phone in the United States.
In Germany, where he is from, and in the United Kingdom, where he lives?and for that matter throughout the full lineup of
European Union countries?he can enjoy the universal availability of GSM service.
But he has another perk as well. When traveling to different countries, he can pick which of the different GSM networks he
wants to use. Not so when he comes to the United States. While in San Francisco for a recent Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers conference on third-generation wireless technologies, he had just one option: Pacific Bell Wireless. And
in many U.S. cities, he finds no GSM service at all.
Eylert told Wireless Week that such situations raise an important issue: There should be a balance of choices.
Granted, many in the United States would say competition in the cellular industry gives both operators and customers a different
type of choice: the ability to select the specific type of network they want. But the issue has greater but more basic significance,
according to Eylert. ?What is the real interest for the end-user?? he asks.
Eylert asked the rhetorical question to express a concern he has about mobile portals. Currently, no matter which country or
network technology a customer uses, there is no uniformity among portals used to access the Internet. Every portal is different
depending on which operators, equipment manufacturers and Internet service providers are partnering to offer the service.
While that gives the operator and content provider a mechanism for maintaining their relationship with the customer, the
customer is handicapped because she cannot pick a different portal or install a different one, as she can for her computer.
And so, Eylert asks, ?What do we want to do with portals in the interests of the end-user??
He doesn?t propose an answer. But he does believe the industry should discuss this emerging issue.
Eylert has a number of suggestions on how the industry can improve cellular service, as well as issues he believes the global
community must discuss.
For one, he suggests that engineers look further into software protection to prevent mobile terminals from any potential
vulnerability to computer viruses, particularly when wireless Internet activities become commonplace. While many have
discounted the possibility as ?rubbish,? he says it?s a security issue that has not yet been solved.
Two additional industry issues that are important to him represent recent initiatives put forth by the UMTS Forum and other
organizations. One is global circulation of terminals, which his organization advocates as necessary for the success of 3G
services.
Currently some countries, such as Brazil, do not allow international visitors to bring their GSM phones into that country. The
UMTS Forum advocates the right of end-users to carry their terminals into a foreign country whether or not it can be used in
that location and the right to use it if it is operable there.
Global certification of terminals is another matter that he believes is of crucial significance to manufacturers, operators and
regulators all over the world.
Certification, a process of validating that devices manufactured or used in different countries meet the same technology
standards, would facilitate the rights of manufacturers and operators to sell the certified goods in different countries.
While such issues may seem to be relatively minor concerns in today?s second-generation digital world, Eylert, as chair of the
UMTS Forum, is thinking of impacts of current business practices on 3G services and thus has his sights set on the future.
And if 3G technology is deployed as scheduled, with services beginning in Japan next year, that future is not that far off.
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