WASHINGTON-Pekka Tarjanne, outgoing secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, predicted last week a family of third-generation wireless standards will emerge by year’s end and that family will include a standard “pretty close” to the Global System for Mobile communications-based technology dominated by Sweden’s L.M. Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia Corp. in Europe and elsewhere around the world.
“I happen to be an optimist with respect to IMT 2000. I believe we are very close to an agreement on the third-generation issue. I believe the results will not be as strict a standard” so that “everybody has to produce the same type of equipment and the same kind of interfaces.”
“It will be a family of standards … with quite a lot of flexibility,” said Tarjanne. “I think that will be in the interest of the ITU members and in the interest of the industry-the industry, in particular. Economies of scale around the world can be used so there will be a possibility for different parts of the industry to compete, so there will not be a monopoly, so that people will be able to create all kinds of funny gadgets and operations and facilities which can compete with each other for the benefit of everyone.”
Though most observers expect Geneva-based ITU to approve a family of 3G standards that includes a GSM-based wideband Code Division Multiple Access standard, Tarjanne’s remarks still represent the first known public acknowledgement of where ITU is headed on 3G.
The official ITU decision on 3G is expected in March, but an answer-albeit an unofficial one-could come sooner.
“We are coming very close to the final result and I hope that by December I could be able to describe to you in detail the ITU family,” said Tarjanne.
Tarjanne’s view’s on 3G, in response to questions following a speech at the American Enterprise Institute last Tuesday, also provided a glimpse into European sentiment regarding GSM and its next-generation successor, W-CDMA.
“The final ITU solution and the global situation will be pretty close to that [GSM]. I mean that [GSM] has so much support around the world, but not exactly what the Europeans themselves have decided. Europe is not the whole world.”
Maybe, maybe not.
Today, CDMA developed by Qualcomm Inc., the San Diego wireless technology firm, is locked out of Europe. There is one school of thought that if W-CDMA becomes dominant in Europe, which is a real possibility if a European directive for a single, pan-European 3G standard is approved several months from now, Japan and much of the rest of world will follow suit.
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute already has embraced W-CDMA.
The United States submitted four 3G standards to the ITU on June 30. One of the four is W-CDMA, which is backed by Ericsson, Nokia and GSM mobile phone operators here and abroad. Another is cdma2000, which Qualcomm and others back.
With the ITU having received 15 3G standards from around the world, Qualcomm, Lucent Technologies Inc., a major wireless equipment supplier, and CDMA wireless carriers are lobbying U.S. and foreign policy makers to converge the different CDMA standards into one.
GSM backers argue 3G harmonization will degrade the resulting technology because the chip rate will be reduced. They claim Qualcomm is trying to leverage exorbitant royalties from manufacturers without regard to the quality of 3G technology.
Qualcomm contends W-CDMA intentionally was designed not to be backward compatible with CDMA mobile phone systems in the United States. Convergence, Qualcomm claims, would offer backward compatibility in an environment where the lack of spectrum might make it the only viable option in the U.S.
Some in the Clinton administration and Congress have voiced concerns about the European Union gaining an unfair trade advantage in a future 3G market potentially worth billions of dollars.
Yet it is unclear, despite the strong rhetoric, how far the administration is willing to go on 3G. Administration aides have made it clear they will not press the EU to accept Qualcomm’s technology per se.
Given that, Qualcomm lobbyists are hoping they can persuade the administration to push for CDMA convergence.
Complicating U.S. 3G policy is the fact that Motorola Inc. is not actively pushing for CDMA convergence. Neither are U.S. subsidiaries of Ericsson, Nokia and Canada’s Northern Telecom Ltd., which nevertheless employ American workers around the country.
“IMT 2000 is one of the core issues for the work of the ITU,” said Tarjanne. “But the ITU is not the secretariat, although headquarters happen to be in Switzerland. It’s a global organization and the decisions are taken by the members. In particular, on questions like IMT 2000, [decisions are] really [made] by member states [and the] 500 private sector companies who work hard.”
