Mobile & Satellite: Alliances lend credence to global roaming
By Jeremy Scott-Joynt
04 October 1999
The squabbling over divergent CDMA standards between European, Japanese and U.S.
companies has served to obscure one story of relatively harmonious collaboration: between
proponents of GSM and those adopting the U.S. TDMA or IS-136 standards.
Advance, the mobile phone alliance proposed between AT&T and BT last month, now
seems likely to throw that relationship into sharp relief.
Both companies have stressed the requirement, in time, to find ways of bringing their
networks together to ensure maximum international interoperability, to reassure corporate
users that mobile roaming between the United States and the rest of the world can be the
norm.
"My understanding is that they are going to make sure that they are reading from the same
page" on standards, said Deborah Monas, an analyst with consultancy Kagan World
Media of Cambridge, England. "A lot of the benefits are roaming benefits, and they'll have
to converge to make this thing work."
This is, perhaps, where the deal diverges from that signed just a few days later between
New York-based Bell Atlantic Corp. and Vodafone AirTouch plc. According to Monas, the
AT&T-BT kind of relationship must be built on a common technological footprint. But the
latter, even taking into account Newbury, England-based Vodafone's experiments in recent
years with GSM-CDMA compatibility, concentrates on providing its users with a
coast-to-coast network in the United States. International interoperability outside those
parts of the world where cdmaOne networks are up and running - such as the Republic of
Korea, Japan, Singapore and Australia - is still some distance off.
In contrast, the Advance alliance has already expressed its desire for transatlantic
interoperability, going so far as to stress plans for seamless IP-based wireless services
through the 3G.IP working group they jointly initiated; although this is not expected to
become reality for another two or three years.
Advance should benefit in the near future from dual-mode handsets offering GSM and
TDMA in the same box. LM Ericsson AB, Stockholm, which claims leadership in the push
for interoperability between the two standards, is expected to have a suitable phone
available in the first half of next year, and Nokia Oyj, Helsinki, will not be far behind.
"Technologically, of course, the evolution of the U.S. TDMA and GSM standards have
very similar goals," said Heikki Ahava, Nokia Mobile Phones' vice president of new system
technologies. "There's already been good cooperation for a long time between standards
groups, operators and manufacturers."
However, there is still, he said, a cost barrier as far as development and bringing products to
market is concerned, brought about in part by the difference in frequencies used on either
side of the Atlantic. "The technology is all there. But the question is will there be market
demand?"
The difference in mobile standards has meant that determining demand for U.S.-Europe or
U.S.-Asia roaming has always been a problem. "It's still not clear what proportion of U.S.
customers - as opposed to European ones - actually need to use international roaming,"
said Steve Pentland, leader of the telecoms group for London-based consultancy KPMG.
Moreover, Bond pointed out, the story of 3G standardization has been one where the
pressure to compromise in the standards war has come from the operators. "When you
speak to equipment manufacturers, they all say that having carriers who really want
harmonization has a huge effect," she said. With AT&T and BT both pushing in this
direction, the probability of garnering a critical mass of demand now looks rather higher.
But, said Pentland, in one important respect the alliances last month could remold part of the
United States's attitude to mobile communications.
"This could be a killer for Iridium and the other satellite networks," he said. "For Europeans
wanting to roam overseas, the U.S. is a hole in coverage. But Americans haven't been able
to take their phones anywhere, which has driven the model for satellite mobile
communications."
The prospect of routine terrestrial mobile roaming, or at the very least seamless billing and
services, could complete the conviction among corporations that satellite mobiles were an
expensive and unnecessary addition to their armory. Terrestrial services, even
cross-platform ones such as TDMA-GSM crossovers, should be little more expensive than
existing single-platform services, and terminal prices are likely to be similar to those found in
early dual-band GSM phones: slightly above normal, but not excessively so.
Certainly, pricing levels will be such that they will do nothing to calm the increasing concern
of satellite mobile operators such as Iridium and Globalstar.
On the road to convergence: Steps to the third generation
Two years of close contact and collaboration between GSM vendors and the Universal
Wireless Communications Consortium, the main next-generation industry group for U.S.
TDMA operators and manufacturers, means that the roadmap for convergence is well
fleshed out.
TDMA networks can evolve compatibility with Global Packet Radio Services (GPRS), GSM's
stepping stone to 3G, by using EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution) as the air
interface.
AT&T is following this route. Indeed, spectrum limitations in the United States mean that
EDGE - on which the 3G.IP group is working to ensure its compatibility in service terms with
the GSM-based 3G standard UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standard) - will
effectively be the target point of the AT&T network's 3G evolution.
With other TDMA operators - particularly in Latin America, say Ericsson officials - buying
into "mobility gateways," the lack of international coverage could start making Sprint PCS,
Kansas City, Missouri, not to mention the Bell Atlantic-Vodafone AirTouch networks, look
a little like also-rans for corporates whose mobile voice and data needs to bridge the
Atlantic.
Mobility gateways make the IS-41 core network used by TDMA systems capable of
interoperation with the services offered by GSM networks.
The Latin American connection has certainly been one driving force behind the
convergence, given that the vast majority of new digital networks in the region are IS-136.
With GSM dominant everywhere apart from the Americas, and the remote likelihood of
South American operators rapidly moving beyond so-called "two-and-a-half G" solutions,
the advantage of rapprochement is clear.
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