Also stolen from the Motley Fool Board. Note the ERICY position on backwards compatibility
Subject: Testimony before Congress 02
Date: 6/4/98 3:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: Horselist
Message-id: <1998060422432200.SAA24254@ladder01.news.aol.com>
Renby, Ajit, Chaz, Mike and all, please enjoy your reading.
Excerpt from house.gov
TESTIMONY OF
BO PIEKARSKI
VICE PRESIDENT,
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIC MARKETING,
WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS DIVISION,
ERICSSON INC
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY
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JUNE 4, 1998
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INTRODUCTION
Good Morning:
Madame Chairwoman Morella, Ranking Member Gordon
and other distinguished members of the House Science Subcommittee on Technology,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
My name is Bo Piekarski. It is an honor to represent Ericsson Inc. before your
Committee today in my role as Vice President of Business Development and
Strategic Marketing for the Wireless Communications Division of Ericsson, Inc.
My testimony will address the principal issues as outlined in your letter of
invitation:
The role of industry standards, in particular the North American and
international wireless standards process, as well as
Ongoing industry-led efforts to create further harmonization of various global
wireless telecommunication standards.
But first, I would like to begin with a few words about Ericsson Inc.
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ERICSSON GLOBAL
Founded in 1876, LM Ericsson combines global expertise in fixed and mobile
networks, mobile phones and infocom systems to provide leading edge
telecommunications equipment to customers worldwide. LM Ericsson has over
100,000 employees active in more than 130 countries. Sales in 1997 exceeded $21
billion. LM Ericsson is traded publicly on the NASDAQ.
ERICSSON NORTH AMERICA
The market presence of Ericsson Inc. ("Ericsson"), the U.S. subsidiary of LM
Ericsson, dates back to 1902 when we opened our first sales office in New York
City. Today Ericsson is now the largest LM Ericsson subsidiary--a $3 billion
company, equivalent to a Fortune 250, with over 8,000 outstanding employees in
more than 100 locations throughout the United States.
Ericsson's U.S. corporate headquarters are located right in the heart of the
"Telecom Corridor" in Richardson, Texas. We have our major North American
manufacturing locations in Morgan Hill, California and Lynchburg, Virginia where
we manufacture cellular base stations and telephones, digital private radio
systems, high-end RF chips and mobile data systems. Last year, Ericsson exported
over $500 million of this equipment around the world. Our global R&D center for
handsets is in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Ericsson is also proud to
count among our strategic business partners such American industry leaders as
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Bay Networks and Texas
Instruments.
ERICSSON'S COMMITMENT TO STANDARDS
Ericsson's views on standards echo the words of Ronald Grawert, Chairman of the
TIA Board. "Standards are vital to many industries, where equipment and systems
must interconnect and interoperate, but in the telecommunications equipment
area, we cannot exist without standards." The philosophy and practice of
Ericsson has always been to respect market forces, in particular the mobile
operators within a respective country and/or region, in determining which
technologies will operate in their respective market.
As one of the world's leading suppliers of wireless equipment, Ericsson provides
support to customer networks operating in more than 100 countries. The
technology choice of our customers includes three digital standards that operate
in several bands, specifically GSM 900/1800/1900, IS-136 800/1900 (also known as
TDMA in the United States) and PDC, plus analog standards AMPS, NMT, TACS and
network equipment. We also provide numerous "dual mode/dual band" handsets that
enable network roaming between technologies as well as bandwidths. Thus, a
Sprint subscriber in suburban Washington, D.C. can use his/her home cellular
number to make and receive calls while roaming throughout Europe, and the Asia
Pacific region.
To make all this happen, Ericsson actively participates in all key accredited
standards forums on all levels: countrywide, regionally and globally. We support
only those standardization processes that are:
industry led;
allowing for licensing on reasonable terms of any company's proprietary IPRs;
open to all qualified participants: operators and manufacturers;
fair in terms of not favoring one company, region, or technology; and
customer driven in terms of serving customer needs for ease of deployment,
global compatibility with other technologies, cost efficiency, and with
high-quality, feature-rich services for the end user.
Ericsson actively participates in all key industry-led standards and global
regulatory groups including:
ANSI (American National Standards Institute), USA
TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association), USA
ARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Businesses), Japan
TTA (Telecommunications Technology Association), South Korea
ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute), Europe
On the international level, all these regional standards organizations work in
close association with the International Telecommunications Union ("ITU"). As
you are probably aware, the ITU, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, is an
organization within which governments and the private sector coordinate global
telecom networks and services. The ITU is comprised of 187 member states,
including the United States and Canada, and over 350 sector members, including
all the leading worldwide manufacturers such as Ericsson, Lucent, Motorola,
Qualcomm and Siemens.
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All the member states and relevant sector members actively participate in the
ITU Standards Committees. These Committees:
define the performance requirements of an ITU technology standard,
evaluate candidate technologies submitted to the ITU and
certify technologies as compliant.
The ITU IS NOT, NOR SHOULD IT EVER BE, in the business of selecting and imposing
a single technology for worldwide deployment. Rather, the ITU should continue to
function as the "international good housekeeping seal of technical approval."
The rigorous scrutiny inherent in the ITU process provides member nations,
private operators, government regulators, and manufacturer's confidence that
they can rely on an agreed upon technology to exceed ITU minimum performance
capabilities.
Recently, the ITU has been in the process of evaluating and certifying for an
approval vote of the entire world membership various 3rd generation technology
wireless submissions from around the globe. These submissions are candidates for
the "IMT 2000" family of standards.
IMT 2000
In 1985, ITU began planning for the future, the 3rd generation, of the wireless
communications industry. The initiative was originally called the Future Public
Land Mobile Telecommunications Systems (FPLMTS). Its name was changed in 1996 to
International Mobile Telecommunications 2000 ("IMT 2000"). IMT 2000 technology
requirements have been established to ensure a feature-rich, bandwidth-rich,
interoperable global solution based on multiple technology alternatives.
Specifically, operators around the world will be in a position to provide their
customers higher data rates, greater communication capacities and enhanced
performance to support the emerging multimedia environment via wireless
networks.
Lucent (AT&T), Ericsson, Motorola, Nortel and Qualcomm have all been part of the
IMT 2000 American preparation meetings, dating back to the early 1990s. With the
support of this group, the United States will be submitting to the ITU for
international acceptance and recognition what my colleagues at Lucent
Technologies refer to as the American "3G family of standards," specifically
TDMA/136 HS, GSM/WCDMANA and cdmaOne/Wideband CDMA. This family represents the
next generation development of all three digital standards deployed in the U.S.
market.
I would like to provide you a little background on the first two. I will rely on
my colleague John Major from Qualcomm to comment in-depth on the Wideband CDMA
proposal, as his company is the primary developer and patent holder of this
contribution.
Before I continue, let me first note that the ITU is expected to accept and
approve all three of these contributions along with others from Europe and Asia.
TDMA/136HS (American standard)
Bell Laboratories created the AMPS technology in the mid-1970s. In late 1987,
Ericsson joined other major manufacturers such as Motorola, Lucent and Nortel in
formally supporting our customers' development of the original American TDMA
standard IS-54. This technology continued to evolve and develop through the
standardization process to its current status as the IS-136 digital TDMA
standard.
Today, TDMA networks have been exported to over 30 countries (representing five
continents). The current worldwide subscriber base exceeds 11 million. In the
United States, AT&T Wireless Services, BellSouth and Southwestern Bell are among
the principal TDMA operators. They have over 5 million subscribers on their
networks. Through standards bodies and our involvement in the Universal Wireless
Communications Consortium (UWCC), a global industry organization consisting of
over 100 carriers and vendors, we are actively supporting these operators in
their development of a next generation TDMA/136 HS technology.
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GSM
By 1985, the European Community ("EC") established by mutual agreement a single,
common wireless standard, GSM. The purpose of this agreement was to end the
fractured picture of different systems that were hindering system
interoperability and continent-wide roaming. Ericsson, together with other major
manufacturers from around the world, including Nortel, Motorola, Lucent (AT&T),
Philips, Siemens, Nokia, and Hughes, supported our respective customers in
developing this GSM standard.
In the wake of the 1993 U.S. PCS (1900) auctions, Ericsson supplied a GSM-based
system modified to meet U.S. requirements in this frequency band. Ericsson is
proud of the fact that we successfully installed the first commercial PCS system
in the United States right here in the Washington/Baltimore area for APC--now
Sprint Spectrum. The system has been both a technical and financial success for
our customer.
Today, GSM systems are installed in over 120 countries serving 82 customers with
100,000 new subscribers signing up every day. In the United States, Pacific Bell
Mobile Services, Powertel, Aeriel, Omnipoint, Western Wireless and Sprint
Spectrum are among the new leading operators in the successful deployment of
this technology, which today has passed the 2 million subscriber mark. The GSM
Alliance of North America, comprised of GSM operators with support from the
North American GSM manufacturers community, has successfully developed the North
American standard WCDMA submission to the ITU as the next step in the evolution
of the U.S. GSM standard.
MANUFACTURERS' STATE OF THE INDUSTRY
Today, the latest statistics on worldwide market share for cellular
infrastructure manufacturing provide a positive picture of intense, robust,
worldwide competition. I am pleased to say that the latest Goldman Sachs
wireless industry manufacturing statistics place Ericsson as the world leader
followed by Motorola with 13%, Nortel with 10%, Lucent with 9%, and Nokia with
7%, respectively. The remainder is split among the remaining manufacturers such
as Siemens, Alcatel, Samsung, and Qualcomm.
On the technology side, all three major worldwide technologies, TDMA, GSM and
cdmaOne, are experiencing incredible worldwide growth rates of 34.4%, 21.3% and
35%, respectively, according to the 1997 CTIA report on subscriber growth
figures. According to the TIA, U.S. telecommunication exports grew at a record
setting 24%. This growth rate represents $21 billion of telecommunications
trade, resulting in a U.S. trade surplus of
$5 billion.
The real competitive challenge for all manufacturers in the future development
of 3G networks will come from many non-traditional suppliers. The 3G network,
like all future data communication networks, will be based on Internet Protocols
(IP). The result is that Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and many other computer
information technology network solution providers will have an opportunity to
enter the global wireless infrastructure market. The good news is that this
means more U.S. company development and continued increase in exports of next
generation networks.
HARMONIZATION OF TECHNOLOGIES
As the world gets smaller and the number of cross-continent operators increases,
the need for global standard harmonization takes on increasing significance.
While Ericsson strongly supports these efforts, we also listen to our operators'
need for regional market variations of such a standard in order to protect their
current investments and allow for a transition to more advanced systems capable
of supporting high speed packet data/internet functions.
Thus, we are working closely with the entire U.S. operator community to support
the most beneficial solutions for the majority of operators and customers in the
United States and around the world. As a result, we are at the forefront of
advocating on behalf of our customers to succeed in this endeavor. This support
includes actively participating in a number of industry-led initiatives around
the world. An example of recent success, not rhetoric, in this area of European
and U.S. 3G harmonization was just completed. A number of the worldwide
operators have just announced, with the support of their respective
manufacturers Motorola, Nortel and Ericsson, an agreement on an international
modulation format to support system compatibility. More efforts are underway to
achieve greater harmony. Ericsson will continue to be in the forefront of these
customer-led efforts.
CONCLUSION
A global wireless telecommunications standard that is feature rich and provides
support for high-speed data/multimedia services is what the majority of
operators would like to see deployed worldwide. Such a standard would reduce the
costs of equipment for operators and allow those savings to be passed on to the
end users (consumers). However, as stated earlier, the standard must enable a
smooth transition from all existing digital standards, e.g., TDMA, cdmaOne and
GSM, to help protect all existing investments and the consumers who use the
current systems for a number of years while 3G systems are being deployed.
Boguslaw "Bo" Piekarski
Vice President,
Business Development and Strategic Marketing,
Wireless Communications Division,
Ericsson Inc.
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Bo Piekarski is Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Marketing,
Wireless Communications Division, Ericsson Inc., which is located in Richardson,
Texas. Mr. Piekarski's responsibilities include strategic planning, marketing,
and developing strategies for Ericsson's 3rd Generation/IMT 2000 activities as
well as using strategic alliances/external technology provisioning to enhance
the company's business solutions.
Mr. Piekarski has held a series of management positions at Ericsson including
director of PCS and manager of Product Management for cellular systems. Before
assuming his current position, he most recently was vice president of the GSM
Business Unit, U.S., where he was responsible for all of Ericsson's GSM
activities including developing Ericsson's strategies, new product
introductions, product management, product planning and technical support.
Prior to joining Ericsson in 1986, Mr. Piekarski worked for Compucon, Inc. as
manager of terrestrial microwave planning. In this position, he was involved in
designing the Chicago cellular system.
Mr. Piekarski holds both a BS and an MS from The University of Michigan.
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