I sent the following email to barryf@pcw.co.uk in reference to his article. If I get any resonse I'll let you know.
I have a few comments in reference to your recent article Straight Talking - What Happened To 3G?
From your article: "Who, I wonder, will be first to sue their government for selling a 3G licence under false pretences?"
I think this is unlikely, yes I know you were probably being facetious, because those hurt by the non-working WCDMA technology are those who selected it from the ETSI/UMTS sanctioned list of 5 supported 3G technologies. They apparently trusted their infrastructure suppliers, the major mostly European telecom equipment makers, who had previously done so well by them with GSM.
I believe the problem stems from a concerted effort by those same telecom equipment makers, i.e., Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Alcatel, Motorola, etc, to replicate the hugely profitable oligopoly they shared in GSM. In the GSM situation, these vendors together contributed the bulk of the intellectual property that went into the GSM spec. They cross-licensed each other without cost, a common practice among manufacturers when one does not own the vast majority of the IP. They also license this IP to others, but at rates that, when combined, can exceed 20% for those without any IP to share. Nothing wrong with that, but one net effect was to keep others at a significant economic disadvantage.
Because of the significant technical limitations of TDMA, and the technical merits of CDMA, with respect to transmitting data, it was clear to everyone that some form of CDMA was the only technically viable option for 3G.
In order to replicate in 3G this magic formula for printing money, it was essential to replicate the IP situation which gave them such an advantage in 2G. That meant that going with the Qualcomm proposal of CDMA2000 was a nonstarter. Much work was done to create a 3G spec which would not be based on Qualcomm's IP. Numerous technical changes were proposed and accepted, including channel size, frequency, timing, and many many others.
These changes have not only not produced a system that works as well as the original, it hardly works at all yet. Handoff is negatively impacted by the timing change, and the other differences when taken together require far more base stations, use much more power, run hotter, wear out batteries quickly, etc.
On top of this huge tactical mistake, they made another, namely that they politicized the standards process in order to control the direction the standard would take. This took engineering, i.e., rigorous testing of alternatives, out of the picture. The result has been a steady stream of hundreds of changes to a standard that can't seem to reach any semblance of stability.
Lastly, ironically, they were unsuccessful in achieving their goal of cutting out Qualcomm, who has proved the criticality of their patents to such an extent that all vendors have licensed WCDMA from them. That will make WCDMA more expensive than CDMA2000 by the incremental IP charges of all WCDMA IP claimants combined, a number which will grow enormously in spite of the multiple efforts at patent pooling. Not only have they hurt the consumer, and the industry by this approach, it won't hurt Qualcomm a bit, since they get the same royalties on all CDMA based equipment, irrespective of the type.
I think if you look closely there's a great book in this, with major intrigue, billions of dollars at stake, egos the size of Europe and America, along with the international prestige of being the leader in the sexy Wireless technology. At the root, as usual, is just money. The constant harangue about Qualcomm's injuriously high and ethically unconscionable licensing and royalty rates turns out to be nothing more than a ploy to keep the real goodies for themselves. This can be just good business when done by one company, but when executed by a consortia of firms it seems even more sinister than price fixing. The sad result of their shenanigans has been that Europe has indeed lost the leadership in wireless, with both Asia and America moving ahead at a rapid clip. As long as European carriers continue to believe that King WCDMA is dressed in beautiful finery, and not naked for all to see, they will continue to fall further and further behind.
Another requirement for maximizing profit was the selling of European carriers on the idea that GSM->GPRS->EDGE->WCDMA was somehow a natural progression, an evolutionary process; and that GSM->CDMA2000 was not, and that it was somehow horribly more expensive and disruptive to implement. The move to GPRS hasn't gone well, and the effective data rates are not significantly better than those for GSM. However, equipment vendors and handset vendors got to sell Billions in new equipment. Edge will likely not see the light of day, and will have limited incremental throughput improvement over GPRS, but it too would extend the oligopoly's hegemony, and make them mountains of new money if implemented. Then there's the big move to WCDMA. That will require, surprise, all new handsets and all new infrastructure equipment. Oh yeah, the infrastructure equipment will need to be tripled to provide the same degree of coverage as GSM.
You know, for the life of me I can't understand why the European carriers persist in their faith in WCDMA. If all went well they get nothing more than they would with CDMA2000, and if not, as we are seeing, they lose Billions. Their equipment makers, however, are not taking the same risks, but stand to reap huge benefits if WCDMA were to win.
John Biddle |
