Hail the birth of broadband PCS! Hail more competition in the marketplace! And hail to what likely will be continued growth for the wireless industry!
But while the industry revels in its inaugural week of auctions to award broadband PCS licenses, some techno-types are working hastily to present a set of standards for this next-generation of wireless services. Standards, of course, will ensure that manufacturers are “on the same page” when building product for the nascent industry, thus allowing one company’s black box to talk to another company’s black box.
However, that works only when there is one standard, and that will not be the case for PCS. In fact, there could be as many as seven different standards by the time broadband PCS services are introduced.
The result: Tons of incompatible equipment in the market.
The Telecommunications Industry Association and Committee T1 (a unit of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions), working together as the Joint Technical Committee, are currently considering four wireless air interface standards. The standards are: Omnipoint Corp.’s composite version of TDMA and CDMA, a DCS-1800/GSM version of TDMA, the IS-54 based version of TDMA and the IS-95 based version of CDMA.
Three additional standards-a Personal Access Communications System (PACS) version of TDMA, a Digital European Cordless Telephone (DECT) version of TDMA and a wideband version of CDMA-will likely be considered by the JTC early next year.
Having seven standards likely will not bring death and destruction to the PCS industry. In fact, given the possible broad range of services that carriers may introduce-whether that be wide-area coverage or in-building systems, low-tier vs. high-tier networks, business niches or the consumer market-multiple standards may well be the answer.
However, there are pitfalls. System interoperability is a big one. The concept of terrestrial-based systems providing universal coverage continues to be in jeopardy. PCS-and its numerous standards-will only add more fuel to the fire that already burns among the cellular carriers, who currently are divided between Code Division Multiple Access and Time Division Multiple Access as the standard for digital cellular services.
As more people begin using wireless services, more demand will be put on the industry to offer product that “travels” with the user-anytime, anywhere. The need for interoperability will increase exponentially with the number of new subscribers, whether those customers are using cellular, PCS, enhanced specialized mobile radio or another form of wireless communications.
So hail to the new PCS. Hail to more competition in the industry. But to hell with all those standards.