Qualcomm slammed for licensing stance
Loring Wirbel
Orlando, Fla. - A de facto alliance of two air-interface
coalitions has indirectly denounced efforts by Qualcomm
Inc. (San Diego) to influence code-division
multiple-access standards efforts. The North American
GSM Alliance LLC and the Universal Wireless
Communications Consortium (UWCC) issued a joint
warning to Congress not to try to influence the International
Telecommunications Union's standards process for
third-generation (3G) digital wireless systems. Qualcomm
has been heavily lobbying Congress to pass resolutions
supporting CDMA. The conflict flared up as a clutch of
new architectures for bringing data to wireless handsets
rolled at the Personal Communications Showcase '98
conference here last week.
In early August, Qualcomm warned the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) that, unless
its suggestions for a 3G interface were taken into account,
the CDMA pioneer would refuse to license its patents.
ETSI approved the wideband-CDMA scheme proposed by
NTT in Japan, but according to Qualcomm some of its
patents apply to that technology.
At last week's announcement, GSM Alliance and
UW-CC-the primary backer of time-division
multiple-access technology-set forth a list of prin- ciples
that Don Warkentin, GSM Alliance chairman, said was
meant to "bring clarity to the policy debate, and bring the
power of the market to bear on the standards process."
The two groups agreed to press for free-market forces, and
to back the hands-off position of the Federal
Communications Commission over any attempts by
Congress to dictate international standards. They also
agreed that the allocation of spectrum should be
independent of the technology used, and that U.S.
government endorsement of a single standard would restrict
competition.
While Qualcomm's name was not mentioned, Warkentin
said that "operators should not be saddled with a forced
choice of a manufacturer's intellectual-property rights."
It's unclear what the joint statement will mean in practice,
said Jim Takach, advanced systems team leader for the
CDMA Development Group. Intellectual-property issues
must be resolved among Qualcomm, Ericsson and other
patent holders for CDMA to move forward, he said, and
industry groups can play no role in these negotiations. The
CDMA Development Group believes there's no need for
two types of CDMA air interfaces in future 3G standards,
Takach said.
Irwin Jacobs, chairman of Qualcomm, said later at a
company press conference that he supported the joint
efforts of the GSM Alliance and UWCC to coordinate ITU
efforts for the 3G cellular standard-known as IMT-2000.
However, Jacobs also said that Qualcomm had no
apologies for actively pushing its own interests in ETSI
and before Congress.
Jacobs said it was inaccurate to suggest that implementing
a version of wideband CDMA proposed by NTT in Japan
or by other companies would eliminate questions about
intellectual-property rights. Qualcomm has core patents in
areas like coherent rake receivers and soft handoffs, he
said, and offering fair licensing policies depends on having
a standards process that takes its interests into account.
The contentious atmosphere has left handset developers
with a sour taste for the effort to move to 3G services. The
industry is coming to realize that it may take five years to
reach the next generation of services, even under a scenario
where several air interfaces survive.
The fault does not lie solely within the CDMA camp,
however. Kevin Duffy, senior manager of development at
Siemens Business Communications Inc.'s Austin, Texas,
R&D facility, said that GSM proponents should have made
a much more unified presentation of their positions for
moving to 3G far earlier. "Where 3G was supposed to
harmonize and converge, we're instead left with a situation
where we not only have to support multiple bands and
modes, we even have to support different flavors of one air
interface," Duffy said.
William Plummer, vice president of government and
industry affairs at Nokia Inc. (Washington), said that
Congress was fooling itself if members think global
standards revolve around decisions made in the United
States. Qualcomm got a fair hearing in several concepts
proposed for ETSI, he said, but raised new issues late in
the game, after ETSI had picked NTT's version of
wideband CDMA. All companies making proposals to
ETSI, ITU and the Japanese ARIB radio board have
intellectual-property rights they can wield, Plummer said,
and Qualcomm will find that opting for confrontation will
lead to hostile consequences globally.
"What is being lost in all this is the interest of the
consumer," said Tapio Hedman, vice president of
communications for Nokia Mobile Phones. "If we don't
cooperate in an open manner, the impact on 3G will be in
no one's interests."
The discord in CDMA camps has breathed new life into
AMPS analog cellular service and into the granddaddy of
North American digital cellular services, TDMA. UWCC
kicked off the PCS conference with efforts to harmonize its
broadband TDMA proposals with those of ETSI's EDGE
(enhanced data rates for GSM evolution) proposals.
Same modulation
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 eight-phase shift-key (8-PSK) modulation for 136HS,
a high-speed data version of the IS-136 standard. This
change was blessed by the Telecommunication Industry
Association's ad-hoc committee on IMT-2000
coordination. This means that both the IS-136+ and
IS-136HS follow-ons will use the same modulation,
making it easier to integrate with the ETSI EDGE effort.
The 136+ spec uses TDMA's existing 30-kHz channel to
support data rates up to 64 kbits/ second; 136HS uses a
200-kHz carrier to support 384 kbits/s outdoors and 2
Mbits/s within buildings. ETSI originally eyed quadrature
amplitude modulation for the faster channel, but agreed to
work with UWCC on shifting EDGE to 8-PSK.
Williams said this indicates ETSI is keeping an open mind
on air interfaces. Although ETSI specified wideband
CDMA based on NTT DoCoMo designs for its IMT-2000
phones, Qualcomm's efforts to foil the NTT DoCoMo
version has thrown the effort into question. Williams said
the TDMA environment allows flexible broadband
channels in new wireless services without the difficult
issues of intellectual-property rights.
He said TDMA will hold an edge in integrating
hierarchical cell structures for in-building subnets, using
remote- and private-system IDs to create instantly
definable wireless PBXs using the same handsets as 3G
cellular services outside a building. "This will still be a
contentious issue," he said. "There is likely to be a family
of air interface standards."
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