ATLANTA-The Universal Wireless Communications Consortium, a group made up of Time Division Multiple Access technology supporters including AT&T Wireless Services Inc., announced a migratable solution to IMT-2000 technology called UWC-136. UWCC said the solution meets the high-speed data application requirements the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nation’s telecommunications arm, has laid out for third-generation technology.
The new solution provides an evolutionary path to the next generation from Interim Standard 136 to IS-136+ to IS-136HS-the high-speed component of UWC-136, said the UWCC. IS-136+ will provide extremely high fidelity voice services and higher rate packet-data services, up to 43.2 kbps in the existing 20 kHz bandwidth. IS-136HS provides user-data rates up to 384 kilobits per second for wide-area coverage in all environments and faster than 2 Mbps for in-building coverage, said the consortium.
“UWC-136 is a market-driven solution for TDMA IS-136,” said Gregory Williams, chairman of the UWCC. “It enables carriers to implement high-speed data, multimedia and other applications incrementally to meet specific market demands. Carriers can retain infrastructure investments and implement data applications while providing quality service delivery to customers-with little impact on the networks and existing spectrum.”
More importantly, said Nick Kauser, executive vice president and chief technical officer with AT&T Wireless, the announcement represents a convergence with Global System for Mobile communications technology. He said consortium members have agreed that TDMA data channels will be aggregated to look similar to GSM data channels. Eventually, TDMA voice channels could be compatible with GSM voice channels if carriers use packetized voice in the future.
“GSM has to evolve. We have to evolve. Why not look for commonality,” said Kauser. “We have spent eight months on the technical analysis. We will work with ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute) to write a common standard.”
UWCC said IS-136 today meets 85 percent of the IMT-2000 requirements. IS-136+ will meet 92 percent of the requirements by year-end, and IS-136HS will meet all of the requirements by year-end 1999.
In related news, Lucent Technologies Inc. last week introduced the first elements of a new global wireless network architecture designed to offer service providers a modular, cost-effective means to rapidly add services and features as needed, including proposed next-generation services like high-speed wireless data.
The enhancements are part of the Flexent Wireless Network architecture designed by Lucent’s Bell Laboratories. The Flexent architecture preserves carriers’ investments in Lucent’s globally installed Autoplex wireless systems, yet helps them provision new services more rapidly because of a new computer system that controls smaller and less complex base station hardware, said Lucent. Also, critical to network operators, the Flexent Wireless Network’s modular design is ready to accommodate a variety of wideband radio components that are likely to become standardized as part of a global family of third-generation wireless networks, said Lucent.
