This Guy Couldn't Shine Perry's Shoes>
James Healy chairs the North America Interest Group of the Europe-based GSM Association
(until recently called the GSM MoU Association.) Healy is also General Manager of Cook Inlet
Western Wireless PV/SS PCS, L.P.
Healy talks about the relationship between the interest group he chairs and the NA GSM Alliance,
the issues concerning wireless data today and in the future, and the digital wireless landscape in
the US as compared to Europe.
PDT: What is the relationship between the GSM North America Interest Group of the
Europe-based GSM Association and the North America GSM Alliance?
JH: GSM North America was formed when the GSM MoU Association decided, because of its
size, that it would be advantageous to create interest groups for each continent or area. One of
these was the North American interest group. We exist to support the ongoing operations of GSM -
especially as it relates to things that are unique to North American regulatory environments or
frequency issues, and to work on improvements going forward.
Every operator that uses GSM is required to join the GSM Association. So all GSM operators in
North America by definition are part of the GSM North American interest group. Thehe Alliance, on
the other hand, is a business entity that's comprised of volunteers. Therefore all the Alliance
members belong to the MoU Association, but the opposite is not true. The driving force for the
Alliance is to come together for a common business interest. It's a corporation that's capable of
owning or building assets, and promoting different services.
PDT: Can you talk about GSM North America's specific agenda regarding data services in
North America?
JH: One of my primary missions for GSM technology in North America is to make it work and
make it work well, so that throughout North America people have voice services, data capabilities,
and SMS capabilities independent of where they are. And incidentally, so that we can bill for them.
Billing is a surprising nuisance problem in the wireless world.
Step two, which crosses a little into the Alliance's mission but I still promote it, is to identify the
success stories, because I think there's much more use of GSM wireless data now than most
people realize. We need to capture that and increase awareness of it. I think it has just been
over-promised and over-hyped for the last five years if not the last ten years. We need to
demonstrate today that people are using their laptops for remote access into networks wired and
wirelessly. The fact is that they can do both, and they are.
Additionally, GSM is looking forward to high-speed, circuit switch data [HSCSD] and GPRS,
General Packet Radio Service. We are working to make sure that both of those become reality.
PDT: Regarding the growth of data in general, when do you think we are we going to see data
usage in any significant numbers in North America?
JH: Through the late eighties the computer industry kept predicting the year of the LAN, and then
finally somewhere along the line people gave up predicting it because it hadn't happened. And then
the next thing we knew, it had. I don't think that anybody really knows when the year of the LAN was,
but we've clearly passed that point. I've moved beyond predicting the year of wireless data, except
to say I think in a couple of years we will look back and realize how much we have incorporated
taking our laptops with us everywhere and just expecting to be connected, whether it's wired or
wireless.
PDT: Why is the landscape for digital wireless so different in the U.S. than it is in Europe where
GSM technology was born?
JH: The fairly straightforward reason is that the U.S. wireless technology grew up into AMPS
[analog], which first went commercial in late 1983 in Chicago. When it went commercial, the
technology was by most standards at least ten years out of date, the reason being that it was frozen
way back in time through the FCC regulatory process. But it was there, it was approved and we
used it. Nobody expected it to go through heavy growth, but it did.
In Europe they had multiple other standards. In the mid-eighties, they looked at it and asked, should
we try to centralize on some standard? What was driving them in Europe was roaming - they wanted
to be able to go from country to country. So they created GSM to be the standard in Europe, and it
became effectively the mandated standard and as such grew up to be a single one.
In the U.S. meanwhile, AMPS capacity was a problem. So the Cellular industry created the TDMA
approach to take one analog channel and put three digital channels on it. At the same time, the
industry was approaching the FCC for additional spectrum because Cellular was growing far faster
than anyone thought it would. Part of what came back was "well, you said that before and we gave
you cellular. You said that would take care of you forever, and now it's three years later and you're
looking for more. What are you going to do to help the process?" So, TDMA was in part an
engineering necessity, and in part it was done to show good faith as we approached the
government for needed spectrum relief. .
CDMA in a way was a follow-on with the same idea of how to get more capacity. I would say that the
U.S. consumers benefited from having multiple technologies available, because we compete not
only in price and services, but also on technology. It's made it more robust.
Now we're headed towards third generation. Given the size of the market, instead of trying to
mandate or encourage one technology, I think you need to have the robustness of different
standards and let them compete. No one can know how the environment is going to evolve.
PDT: What are the benefits of using GSM for data compared to other technologies?
JH: To give you the quick answer - it works, it's reliable; it's predictable. I can actually just plug it
in and let it do what it's supposed to do. Also the whole GSM network is in fact secure – it's
encrypted. Nothing is better than GSM in the commercial world from a security standpoint. When
you put those two together, it's a winning combination.
PDT: What priority does GSM North America have for international roaming?
JH: The North American GSM operators have clearly become more aware and more interested
in international roaming. In GSM, the "G" is global – that's one of its big advantages. However it is
helpful to look at what happened in Europe as GSM started, even though roaming was a founding
principle, it was still a couple years before they could get systems up and running and really
concentrate on implementing roaming. Looking back in this country, I remember vividly in the early
years that roaming was considered the "roaming problem",. not the "roaming opportunity". It was
"What do we do those damn people that drive out of our network?" Now it's considered an
opportunity. Just in the last six months there's been a much stronger push by the North American
operators not only to get roaming agreements signed, but to fully implement worldwide roaming.
PDT: You mentioned HSCSD and GPRS. I would like to get a sense of when you think those might
be coming our way?
JH: Speaking just for myself, maybe because I used to be on the vendor side, I tend to be
cautious about technologies that are promised more than six months in the future. However, I think
with see both HSCSD and GPRS in field trials in 1999, with commercial introduction the following
year.
PDT: When HSCSD and GPRS and eventually third generation technologies make their way
through the GSM world and the U.S. and are implemented, how do you think that's going to
change things in terms of demand and in terms of services offered?
JH: U.S. landline network traffic is split about fifty-fifty between voice and data. The wireless data
number is still something in the percent of one two range.. With these new higher bandwidth
technologies we will see a major shift in wireless to data. Then as the ability to transport it is there,
we're clearly going to want to see applications that consume it. The growth and use of the air waves
will not be unlike what you've seen in memory in the computer field. Once upon a time you wrote
programs, squeezed them down into a little bit of space because you had limited memoryand
processing capacity. We now have tons of memory and processing capacity, thanks in large part to
Intel.
The same thing is going to happen in the non-wired environment. There a huge quantity of
information that needs to go back and forth in various forms. And as it becomes possible to do it,
that space will be sucked up and consumed.
I've actually seen new real-time video operating over existing GSM infrastructure. Ii is possible to do
it. And there are some surprisingly simple applications. The laptop picture phone - talk about
something that's been around forever and hasn't gotten there - the laptop with a video ability - that's
all going to be there. And it will consume lots of bandwidth.
PDT: Regarding third generation technology, the alliance recently announced that it is
supporting a combined flavor of W-CDMA, rather than the W-CDMA version that the European
and Asian GSM Association members are supporting. Are these groups now on different tracks
that are going to result in incompatible standards?
JH: I think on balance we're headed in the same direction. The North American GSM MoU clearly
believes, as a lot of the world does, that Wideband CDMA or GSM third generation is the right way
to go. It's the next generation of GSM using a CDMA radio structure. Within Europe, the regulatory
bodies tend to over regulate, and there is concern that they will mandate a winner in this process.
This runs contrary to all of the things that we've talked about before that we believe in terms of
viability, and desirability, of different standards in a competitive environment .
My usual comment on standards, that I picked up when we were trying to do wireless LANs, was that
"Standards are great. Everybody should have one" Seriously though, I believe that our approach,
which is in fact a family of standards, is the best solution for customers, carriers and suppliers..
Some specific things being looked at would allow the family of standards to include some subsets
within it, so that if you use the subset you pay for it. If you don't use it you don't pay for it. We think
that will help to facilitate this going forward.
PDT: What are the biggest challenges to resolving the 3G specification issues as far as North
America is concerned?
JH: It's probably to make sure that the market place is allowed to decide. And to make sure the
discussion stays in the standards arena, and that it's not artificially portrayed as a trade issue.
There's a lot of discussion about the so-called exclusion of American manufacturers. But I think
there's only one American manufacturer who isn't active in the GSM world. When I was in India
recently with a GSM group, we had a delightful day which was sponsored and paid for by Lucent
Technology and their GSM ventures. As far as I know, Lucent is still considered an American
company. Also, there's the fact that we American GSM operators are Americans as well as GSM
operators. It's not a trade war issue, but it's misrepresented as such, which just does not serve the
consumers who will eventually buy the service.
© 1999 Intel Corporation. Judith Berck is an employee of Intel corporation.
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