chapq,
<< "Good enough" 2.5G systems will be excluded from the 3G global system for a long time. That was not the original objective. >>
The original vision was for a single converged standard operating in specific frequency bands identified in 1992, and to be able to make 3G compliant high-speed wireless voice, data and Internet access technology to be available anytime, anywhere.
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The compromise was 2 core networks with 5 radio interfaces ("harmonized").
The physical UIM was mandated to achieve some element of interoperability.
"Good enough" 2.5G systems will interoperate with 3G systems and that is what the 3GPP standards are all about.
<< I don't see the GSMA doing anything constructive in that direction. >>
GSMA (formerly GSM MoU) has been highly focused on global roaming for as long as I can remember. Their focus became the carriers focus. Huge investments were made in mobile IN and other apparatus to facilitate roaming. Today, as a result, GSM customers can roam in 161 countries.
What the GSMA did in "constructive" fashion was to form the Global Roaming Forum. Rob Conway started work on this in early 1999:
Launched in June 2000 by the GSM Association, the GSM Global Roaming Forum is comprised of companies with roaming products and services from GSM, iDEN, CDMA, TETRA, and now TDMA technologies. The mission of the Roaming Forum is to develop technical requirements for terminals, networking, and smart cards and commercial standards for services, billing, financial settlements, and fraud management.
Roaming Forum participants will champion the interoperability between GSM and these non-GSM technologies. The output from the Roaming Forum will be shared with technical standards development organisations and trade organisations whose member companies foster intra-standard roaming today. While the initial focus for the Roaming Forum is Second Generation technologies, future work will involve the interoperability of Third Generation technologies, chiefly 3GSM (Wideband CDMA/UMTS), EDGE and CDMA2000.
What did CDG do "constructive" to champion Global roaming?
Sheesh ... I can't even use my Verizon tri-mode CDMA/AMPs phone in Brazil.
This is the GRF Mission Statement:
The GSM Global Roaming Forum provides a collaborative and non-competitive opportunity for the discussion and development of standards for roaming between GSM and other wireless technologies.
These are the GRF's Key Objectives:
* Build the necessary standards to allow roaming between multiple incompatible standards (currently CDMA, GSM, iDEN, TDMA).
* Welcome individual standards development organizations to the GSM Global Roaming Forum and serve as catalyst for accelerating workplans to harmonize a seamless roaming strategy across all technologies.
* Operate as a self-sustaining body with accountability to budget and work plans.
* Offer library of GSM Association Intellectual Property to help bridge the technologies.
* Focus on business and strategic issues for current and next generation voice and high-speed data services for interstandard roaming.
<< They use global roaming as an exclusive sales tool. >>
As it turns out, it is a heck of a tool. just look at the score card.
The lack of a global roaming capability was identified as CDMA's "Achilles Heel" eons ago.
As we enter a data-centric era of wireless, roaming takes on enhanced significance.
<< That, too, obfuscates, obstructs and denies the original objective of a powerful global wireless telephony resource. >>
"Obfuscates, obstructs and denies" ... spare me, please.
You can lead (drag in this case) a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
- Eric - |
