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To: Thomas Sprague who wrote (19585)	12/11/1998 5:23:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

More 3G> From the December 14, 1998 issue of Wireless Week 3G Players Question ITU's Dispensability By Caron Carlson WASHINGTON--The day after the International Telecommunication Union delivered an ultimatum to the clashing intellectual property right claimants in the third-generation standards debate, both camps issued veiled hints that they may not need the ITU after all. In a press release Dec. 8, Ericsson Inc. offered a standards harmonization proposal and simultaneously heaped praises on the 3G Partnership Project, a group composed of standards bodies from Europe, Japan, Korea and the United States that support wideband code division multiple access technology. While some in the industry view this and other regional projects as duplicating the ITU's decade-long efforts, others question whether the partnerships may become the ultimate arena for completing work on next-generation wireless standards. Proponents of cdma2000 rejected Ericsson's harmonization proposal and simultaneously downplayed the ITU's importance in the deployment of their 3G systems. "The fact that the ITU said it will go forward with standardizing [time division multiple access] is probably not really much of an issue for us," said Perry LaForge, executive director for the CDMA Development Group. "Most of the world only cares about CDMA for 3G ... We'll proceed forward on CDMA" in the Telecommunications Industry Association, the U.S. standards body backing cdma2000. "The IPR would be granted under the terms of the TIA." LaForge said Ericsson's harmonization proposal, which centers on reducing the so-called chip rate for W-CDMA from 4.096 to 3.84 megabits per second, represents continued unwillingness to offer a feasible compromise for cdma2000 proponents. "Their compromise proposal is just another iteration of what they've done all along," LaForge said. "They're trying to do things to be purposefully different. To do something like this and then call it a compromise is basically an insult." CDG will accept no chip rate other than cdma2000's 3.68 Mbps rate, he said. Ericsson's reduced chip rate proposal was intended as an olive branch, and any further reduction would result in unacceptable performance loss, according to John Giere, vice president for public affairs. "The 3.84 has always lingered in discussions. Now it's time we try to make it happen," Giere said. "What [the other camp is] saying is: Do it our way or no way ... In any case, the regional standardization process is still going forward." Giere said operators around the world, including some cdmaOne carriers, have expressed interest in the 3.84 chip rate. For TDMA proponents, the ITU ultimatum to Ericsson and Qualcomm Inc. raised concern that the 3G process will drag on past its schedule if the IPR deadline is extended. "The IPR argument has already gone on six months too long," said Paul Meche, chairman of the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium. "As a result, media attention, government interaction and all the rest have become an embarrassment to the industry and also a waste of a lot of resources. Those who complied [with ITU rules] in good faith and on schedule are now being held up."

To: Thomas Sprague who wrote (19585)	12/11/1998 5:25:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

ITU>3G> From the December 14, 1998 issue of Wireless Week ITU Issues Warning Vendors Must Resolve IPR Issues By Daniel Pruzin GENEVA--The International Telecommunication Union last week warned Ericsson Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. to resolve their differences over intellectual property claims on radio transmission technologies--or risk seeing the two standards disqualified for consideration as a global third-generation standard. The ITU is now trying to draw up an "umbrella standard" for 3G systems that would allow for global mobile roaming and worldwide interoperability between landline and wireless networks. ITU officials have said the final choice is expected to include several compatible standards because no single technology will be the best under all operating environments. Sixteen terrestrial radio and satellite standards have been submitted to the ITU by various industry groups worldwide as possible third-generation norms. To be considered, however, all intellectual property rights claims on submissions must either be waived or licensed on a fair and nondiscriminatory basis. Both Stockholm, Sweden-based Ericsson and Qualcomm Inc. of San Diego submitted statements to the ITU last fall claiming patents or pending patents on technologies used in both wideband code division multiple access and cdma2000. But Qualcomm surprised the industry by announcing that it was unwilling to either waive or license its intellectual property rights on W-CDMA unless three demands were met regarding the selection of the 3G standard. Qualcomm's demands were that a single, converged worldwide CDMA standard should be selected as the new 3G standard; that the new standard must be backward-compatible with existing second-generation standards; and that disputes on technological points "should be resolved by selecting the proposal that either is demonstrably superior ... [or] most compatible with existing technologies." Ericsson earlier told the ITU that it was willing to license its patents on both W-CDMA and cdma2000 but only on the basis of reciprocity. "As long as Qualcomm doesn't offer IP rights, we won't offer ours," said Ericsson Vice President Ake Persson. The Qualcomm demands reflect fears among the U.S. industry that the European Union is trying to impose the UMTS terrestrial radio access standard as both a regional and global norm to protect its domestic manufacturers. UTRA, developed by Ericsson based on W-CDMA technology, was adopted by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as the successor to global system for mobile communications. The day after ITU's comments, Ericsson announced its willingness to compromise on the development of 3G by lowering its standard's chip rate from 4.096 megabits per second to 3.84 Mbps to ensure compatibility with other new and existing norms (see accompanying story on Page 1). UTRA opponents accused ETSI at a congressional hearing last July of adopting the standard based on political rather than technical considerations and of creating a technical barrier to trade by deliberately making UTRA incompatible with most existing standards. U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky last October accused the EU of trying to shut U.S. mobile firms out of the market by adopting an exclusionary standard that would make it prohibitively expensive for companies using other standards to sell and operate their products in Europe. The ITU wants to make a decision on the 3G "umbrella standard" by March. If the IPR stalemate is not resolved by the end of the year, the organization warned, it may be obliged to reject a half-dozen CDMA-based submissions, including cdma2000 and UTRA as well as proposals from the U.S.-based Telecommunications Industry Association's T1P1 Group for W-CDMA North America, Japan's Association of Radio Industries and Businesses for W-CDMA and South Korea's Telecommunications Technology Association for Global CDMA II. "The ITU is concerned that a 'virtual holy war' [between rival firms] can well mark the end of a dream: the dream for consumers to have truly 'anywhere, anytime communication across networks, across frontiers, across technologies for personal access to information age services,' the organization said in its Dec. 7 statement.