Benjamin,
<< You ignore interesting recent Asian wCDMA developments >>
I try not to ignore too much <g>. Always possible that I have missed something. Possible also, that I have misinterpreted it.
I will be honest and state that I do not know exactly how Asian UMTS UTRA DS (WCDMA) differs from European UMTS UTRA DS (WCDMA). Perhaps you can enlighten me?
Within the GSM community regional and (even country specific) differences have always existed. I am under the impression that regional differences have been very much converged or at least harmonized in the 'Release99' standard and these differences will be further converged or harmonized in 'Release2000' and future iterations of the standard.
<< NTT's "agreements" with Korean telecoms came at a price - backward compatibility with Korea's latency systems (soon to be 1x). SK Telecom made this clear >>
Yes. Harmonization and the standards process helped accomplish this, both as it applies to the NNI, hooks and extensions, and the implementation of the requisite R-UIM standard by CDG (and TIA) which Qualcomm will accommodate in future chipsets.
<< ERICY, working with NTT on the May 2001 rollout, suggests 1x can be the upgrade path to either wCDMA or CDMA 2000 >>
Are you suggesting that NTT would consider implementing 1xMC in Japan?
If so, I'd like to hear more.
<< Asian wCDMA, in light of strategic and Asia-specific political concerns, is clearly becoming different than Euro-virgin-wCDMA. Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan will define, and redefine as required and pleases them, what wCDMA becomes. Europe, being last, looses significance in the equation. Europe can only watch. And, in the end, follow >>
The WCDMA air interface was proposed to ETSI by the largest manufacturer of infrastructure in the world (European) and one of the largest wireless carriers in the world (Asian). It won out over 4 competing proposals, all of which I think were for a version of wideband CDMA.
I am under the impression that 3GPP, UMTS Forum, OHG, and GSMA have brought about significant harmony that never existed before between the Europeans and Asians (carriers and manufacturers) and the distinctions between "Asian wCDMA" & "Euro-virgin-wCDMA" were blurring, regional differences aside.
<< It is a particularly European mindset that assumes that after standards are completed, and authorized by the "bureaucracy", that standards will not change. And this may well be true within the confines of socialist Europe. >>
This statement I don't completely understand. GSM was once a European thing. That was many, many years ago. The 2G GSM specification has evolved through 4 distinct phases (GSM phase one, phase two, phase 2 plus, GPRS. In addition DCS-1800 has evolved into GSM-1800 and GSM-1900 has been deployed in the Americas since 1995. ETSI maintains the standards for all. The standardization process is ongoing.
<< But Europe cannot "call the game on account of rain" for 2(?) years while they get their technology in order. >>
So far the 3GPP UMTS community seems to be doing a pretty good job of proliferating the standard they authored based on the evolved GSM/MAP network. As Dr. Jacobs says, lets hope there are not significant delays beyond current implementation schedules, since Qualcomm gets paid on DS as well as MC and 2.5G GSM has no cdma content.
I do find it unfortunate that UMTS UTRA DS will (or could be) chosen by IS-95 operators. So far we dodged the DDI/IDO bullet. I am hopeful that at least one Korean operator opts for cdma2000 in the new spectrum.
<< Asia clearly has the opportunity to take the wCDMA "ball". And little reason to resist. Europe is in the process of losing control of "the standard" ... Euro-virgin-wCDMA is dying as I write >>
You'll have a hard time convincing me that it is a European standard. Its a universal standard that is tailored to IMT-2000 spectrum. That is (unfortunately) its appeal.
Asia is certainly a player in worldwide wireless.
regards,
- Eric - |
