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Ericsson Moves to End 3G Deadlock
By Sheridan Nye at CommunicationsWeek
International
15 December 1998
The long-running stalemate over a single global standard
for third-generation mobile appears to have been broken,
with a dramatic reversal of direction by L.M. Ericsson AB.
The dispute over rival 3G proposals had become a
nose-to-nose stand-off between Ericsson and Qualcomm
Inc. Both companies withheld Intellectual Property Rights
(IPR) to allegedly "essential" aspects of rival air-interface
technologies, cdma2000 and Wideband-CDMA, on
condition that the International Telecommunication Union
support their conflicting visions for IMT-2000, the ITU's
proposed global family of 3G standards.
While the vendors dug in, they came under increasing
pressure from the industry and the ITU to find a
compromise. Now Ericsson appears to have given way,
having relinquished its demand that the two
spread-spectrum technologies should develop separately.
"We can't keep on with this deadlock," said Eric Osterberg,
communications director, Ericsson Mobile Systems. "We
have to live with a family of standards, we don't need any
more delays. This could be a way forward to get these
systems aligned."
If the two vendors agree to pool their technologies and
IPRs, the world could see the first dual-mode handsets for
3G global roaming by 2001, Ericsson said.
The substance of Ericsson's offer is to harmonize
W-CDMA and cdma2000 technologies. Crucially, it has
conceded a lower chip rate, from 4.096 megahertz to 3.84
MHz. This effectively reduces the specified frequency
spread to within the smaller spectrum blocks allocated to 3G
in the United States. It also paves the way for backwards
compatibility with the core networks for the world's two
dominant 2G standards, GSM and cdmaOne, the
air-interface standard licensed by Qualcomm.
If an agreement is reached, the deal could avert a looming
trade war and would allow Qualcomm to target the
European market in force for the first time. U.S. trade
officials had complained that the European Union, through
its support for the Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
(UTRA) proposal based on W-CDMA, sought to shut U.S.
vendors out of Europe. This, they claimed, would be a
repeat of tactics the EU used when it mandated support for
GSM against the cdma alternative proposed by the United
States.
As CWI went to press, San Diego, California-based
Qualcomm welcomed the "positive development." But it
declined to comment on whether it would release its IPRs,
pending clarification on other outstanding technical
differences, such as base station synchronization.
Osterberg denied that Ericsson's decision amounted to a
climb-down. He also denied it came in response to a recent
ITU policy statement that reaffirmed its consensus view
that 3G should be based on a single global standard,
supporting global roaming. "Nothing has changed," said
Osterberg.
"This looks like a quick reaction [to the ITU], but it's a
coincidence. We've been working on this for some time."
Meanwhile, the European Telecommunications Standards
Institute has formed the 3G Partnership Project, a new joint
body with standards groups from Asia and the United
States to harmonize various 3G proposals with UTRA. |
