re: GSMA Press Release
>> GSM Association Heralds the End of the 'Wireless Wars'
21 February 2001
Cannes, France
GSMA PR
At the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, the GSM Association today (Wednesday, Feb 21) heralded the end of the wireless technology wars and forecasted that third generation wireless services would usher in an unprecedented period of global technical and business growth.
"The year 2000 saw virtually all the competing camps establish a solid family of technologies, that will enable all of us to build on existing successes and move forward," said GSM Association Chair Jim Healy. "The GSM family is again proving that the approach of creating and delivering a standardisation framework that enables the global operator and supplier communities to work together does deliver the seamless global services experience that customers demand."
With more than 452 million customers globally, GSM is the most widely used wireless platform on the planet today. It has captured almost 70 per cent of the world's digital wireless market, and has been adopted by more than 400 operators in some 162 countries to date.
Now, says the Association, with the near universal adoption by 3G licence holders of 3GSM (W-CDMA), the Association's vision is to deliver seamless global services anywhere on the planet.
CEO of the GSM Association, Rob Conway described how the GSM Association was becoming an inclusive group and to that end is welcoming partnerships with other platforms.
"Last year we established a GSM Global Roaming Forum to look at ways of developing inter-operability between GSM and the TDMA, CDMA, TETRA and iDEN communities. We have welcomed representatives of those bodies to our meetings and many operators from those platforms have joined with the Roaming Forum."
"These discussions have gone way beyond arguing the merits of the technologies," he stressed. "This is about the commercial realities of building a global seamless service and the success of the GSM standardisation and collaboration approach to the market brooks no argument."
Today," he said, "as the 3GSM planning process heats up, we are no longer looking to debate which technology is best. Rather, we need to determine which is the best way to deliver what the consumer wants - a seamless, limitless world of wireless communications. A visual not just a verbal wireless world. "
"We can only do that through co-operation and collaboration. The GSM approach proves that way works." <<
- Eric - |
