All, GSM BULL;
3G cellular goes over to Edge
Electronics Times
by Svetlana Josifovska
Europe is unlikely to have a third generation (3G)
mobile telephony system in place by 2002 as
initially envisaged.
Instead an enhanced version of GSM, dubbed Edge, will be adopted as a
stepping stone.
David Grieves, a [ Hewlett-Packard ] representative sitting on the ETSI
board, said: "2001 is scheduled for the deployment of 3G in Japan and for
Europe 2002. As in most cases, these time scales are optimistic - there are
so many things that can go differently to change these dates. The migration
of GSM to 3G is open to speculation."
There are two contenders for the protocol that will enhance the GSM data
rates: GPRS (general packet radio system) and Edge (evolved data rates for
GSM enhancement). Edge has been promoted heavily by ETSI's
manufacturers' pressure group. It improves the data rates of GSM three
times to 384Kbit/s through a better modulation technique.
Bob Rennard, product manager at HP, said: "Edge has been officially
proposed as a stepping stone to move to W-CDMA. It allows the better
use of the existing GSM infrastructure."
Even when W-CDMA is adopted, there will be many Edge users. Matt
Trezise, product manager at HP, said: "You may not get a licence for
wideband. There will be a mix in the marketplace. Some will start instantly
with W-CDMA and some will use Edge. It's hard to predict."
The Edge physical interface specification is expected to be published by
ETSI in November.
At present, the air interface solution for international mobile telecoms or
IMT-2000 is still not agreed on. There are no fewer than 15 candidates for
this standard with the two predominant ones being W-CDMA and cdma
2000.
Grieves said: "Cdma2000 is the son of IS-95. It uses a lower chip rate of
3.686Mchip/s compared to W-CDMA which uses 4.096 Mchip/s.
"GSM is the dominant global system with 100 million subscribers. It's the
natural precursor to W-CDMA. IS-95 is in the US and it has about 60
million subscribers, although it is said to be growing rapidly."
(Copyright 1998)
_____via IntellX_____
Publication Date: October 20, 1998
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