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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (15348)	9/22/1998 4:33:00 PM
From: James Connolly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Consortium looks to coordinate 3G digital cellular proposals eet.com ORLANDO, Fla. - Despite the European Telecommunication Standards Institute's strong support of Wideband CDMA for a third-generation (3G) digital cellular air interface, backers of Time Division Multiple Access standards aren't folding up their tents and going home. The Universal Wireless Communications Consortium (UWCC) that backs TDMA kicked off the Personal Communications Showcase '98 conference on Tuesday with expanded efforts to harmonize its broadband proposals with those of ETSI's Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (Edge) proposals. Greg Williams, chairman of UWCC and vice president of wireless systems at SBC Communications Inc., said that the UWC-136 effort to define a wideband CDMA had shifted to an 8-Phase Shift Key modulation scheme for 136HS, a high-speed data version of the IS-136 standard. This change was blessed by TR45.3.AHIC, the Telecommunication Industry Association's ad-hoc committee on IMT-2000 coordination. As a result, both the IS-136+ and IS-136HS follow-ons will use the same modulation, which will make it easier to integrate with the ETSI Edge effort. UWCC's efforts to meet the IMT-2000 broadband requirements led to the definition of both IS-136+, which uses the existing 30-kHz channel of TDMA to support data rates up to 64 kbits/second, and of IS-136HS, which uses a 200-kHz carrier to support 384 kbits/s in outdoor environments and up to 2 Mbits/s in in-building networks. ETSI originally had decided on quadrature amplitude modulation for the faster channel, but agreed to work with UWCC on shifting Edge over to 8-PSK. This indicates that ETSI members are keeping an open mind on air interfaces, Williams said. Although ETSI specified wideband-CDMA based on NTT DoCoMo designs for its IMT-2000 phones, Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego) threatened in early August to refuse to license its CDMA patents unless all of its suggested changes were made to W-CDMA. Williams said that the TDMA environment can allow flexible broadband channels in new wireless services without the encumbrance of intellectual property issues raised with CDMA. Williams said that TDMA will hold an edge on integrating hierarchical cell structures for in-building sub-nets by using remote system IDs and private system IDs to create instantly definable wireless PBXs that use the same handsets as 3G cellular services that operate outside a building. "This will still be a contentious issue, in ETSI and in other regions," Williams said. "There is likely to be a family of air interface standards around the world." TDMA still faces an uphill struggle for 3G acceptance, because the limitations of time-divided slices for mixed-media services are more severe than CDMA's use of spread signals used in conjunction with coherent rake receivers. But Keith Radousky, director of engineering at BellSouth Cellular Corp., said that technical advances can only be examined in the context of cost of implementation, a realm where TDMA holds a big advantage, he said. To prove their point, UWCC members illustrated the case of Sao Paulo, Brazil, where a city four times the size of New York standardized on TDMA, and exploded in early 1998 from a base of 4 percent mobile service penetration and 13 percent wireline phone penetration. BellSouth paid $2.5 billion for the license in July 1997 and standardized on TDMA as an air interface. Nortel was named as a prime vendor a month later. In nine months, 200 cell sites were up in the city, with deployment of 340 sites planned by the end of 1999. The system already has 10 operational circuit switches, and the official launch date of May 18 this year was two months ahead of schedule. There are now 535,000 subscribers, with 1 million expected by the end of this year. The news from South America as a whole is equally upbeat for TDMA. Actual numbers grew from 2.7 million to 4.9 million subscribers from 1997 to mid-1998, which is on track to meet the forecast of 6 million users by the end of this year and 17.3 million South American users in 2002. Worldwide, current actual TDMA subscribers number 13.88 million now, and are expected to grow to 115 million by 2002. "Not only are we doing better than projections globally, but TDMA is the number one air interface in the Americas, bar none," said Fritz Hibbler, vice president of operations for the UWCC. Regards JC.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (15348)	9/22/1998 7:31:00 PM
From: A.J. Mullen	Respond to of 152472

Off Topic**, but Maurice your petrol [gas] is the second cheapest of twenty or so countries considered in this week's Economist. The cheapest is the US. The most expensive are Norway and the UK, the only two net-producers of oil in the list! Only in the US and NZ is the tax less than 50% of the cost. Well, that's not really true. Much cost is exported and deferred; viz. the expenses of coping with global warming. How's that for someone who tries to stay on topic? ;-)