World Telecommunication Day 1999 |
Earlier this year, it looked as if a fundamental disagreement between competing mobile manufacturers over next-generation standards could spark a trans-Atlantic trade war.
The world's most popular mobile phone technology, Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), was developed under the aegis of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), although it is now deployed in 133 countries around the world. From the start, one of the attributes built into the standard was roaming. This allows subscribers to be contacted on their own phone and number anywhere there is a GSM operator, as long as the operator has a roaming agreement with the subscriber's home network.
The next - often referred to as third-generation - mobile will need to allow roaming for text and other visual messages, not just for phone calls, as mobile communications moves away from being primarily a verbal to a multimode medium. As if this were not a big enough challenge, the new generation must also interwork with other, second-generation technologies in addition to GSM. These include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, also known as IS-95, and D-AMPS (for Digital Advanced Mobile Phone System), which are popular in the United States and Central and South America.
Naturally, all three systems are championing their own approach in the battle to dominate in the standards-setting process for third-generation mobile communications. They are represented by the GSM Alliance, the CDMA Development Group and the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium (UWCC) respectively.
The plan to build the world's biggest machine - a seamless, multimode, mobile network - means the stakes are higher than ever before for equipment manufacturers, all of whom are desperate to protect and leverage their existing technology base. Some GSM supporters argued that CDMA was not a sufficiently mature or proven technology and said that GSM was resisted in the United States because it was Not Invented Here. The CDMA lobby points to greater data speeds and operational efficiencies.
The most publicized row has been between Qualcomm (which pioneered CDMA's use in the commercial world and is American) and Ericsson of Sweden, one of the largest GSM equipment manufacturers. It concerned various patents and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) held by the two. Normally, in formal standards-setting procedures, participants agree to either waive their right to patents and IPR, or commit to negotiate licenses on a nondiscriminatory basis and on reasonable terms and conditions in the interest of moving the standard along for everyone's benefit. Neither was prepared to do so for air interface technologies that they ''owned'' and were crucial to the standard.
Simon Forge of the London-based consultancy OSI says: ''Patents are very valuable, but open-source licensing might be a good thing in the mobile world and would mean all improvements were out in the open, too. It would be more productive to talk about 'copyleft' - that is, open access to standards-related information that is left on a Web site, say - than to argue about copyright. It has certainly worked well for many Internet standards that have evolved and become de facto quickly, by consensus. One of the three main competing mobile operating systems for terminals, Symbian, appears to be going great guns because it is free to developers.''
Nokia, a member of the consortium that developed Symbian, has successfully marketed its GSM phones in much of Africa, Asia and the Americas - even though they were originally designed for the integrated European market.
Tim Kelly, head of operations analysis at the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva, observes: ''When standards battles rage, nobody wants to be seen to be backing down, but it doesn't really matter, because enough common ground has been established to give both manufacturers and consumers enough confidence to go ahead.''
Annie Turner