CANCUN, Mexico-The big push to interoperate GSM and TDMA standards is well under way, allowing customers using either standard to roam around the world and giving U.S. TDMA operators a breath of life in their ongoing struggle with CDMA carriers for domestic market share.
The future growth of Time Division Multiple Access technology seems limited in the United States, but in Latin America, where wireline networks are expensive and sparse, TDMA is expected to thrive.
For TDMA operators around the world, the deployment of the EDGE third-generation data solution will bring the TDMA community and its customers to an entirely new level in terms of speed and services.
Now three years in the making, EDGE, or Enhanced Data for Global Evolution, is expected to provide users with data rates up to 384 kilobits per second, a rate faster than CDMA’s 1XRTT and GSM’s General Packet Radio Services data solutions.
“In the next 18 to 20 months, something is going to happen to put together these experiences from the past few years,” said Keith Radousky, director of engineering for BellSouth Cellular, at the recent Universal Wireless Communications Consortium’s Global Summit in Cancun, Mexico.
Commercial deployment of EDGE is expected in 2002, but as past predictions have proven, deployment could be even further away. At the 1999 UWCC Global Summit, many were predicting 2001 as the year for EDGE.
In the interim, TDMA carriers must find other ways of providing data services, which lately have become a major selling point for carriers trying to woo new customers and reduce churn, said Alex Cena, wireless equipment analyst with Salomon Smith Barney in New York.
TDMA carrier AT&T Wireless Services Inc. is trying to tout its Cellular Digital Packet Data technology as an always-on, fast data solution for business customers. CDPD however, is analog-based and not as spectrally efficient as some carriers would like it to be.
“I’d rather wait for EDGE and get some efficiencies on the network. We’ll see if we need to do it before then,” said BellSouth’s Radousky.
AT&T recently took several hefty blows from analysts, media and investors for its multimillion dollar investments in its TDMA network, which in places like New York and Washington, D.C., has had trouble keeping up with demand. The idea of moving ahead on a data technology and trying to make its TDMA network interoperate with GSM when the company is still working out the kinks in its voice network may seem backward, but AT&T feels it is essential to keep pace with the competition.
“I don’t think people will want to turn back,” said David Nagel, chief technology officer and president of AT&T Labs. “EDGE will be used to get the market primed with GSM carriers in the U.S.”
SBC Communications Inc. gave AT&T an ally in the fight to keep TDMA in the game by announcing in January it will switch the 20 remaining Ameritech Corp. wireless properties it owns from CDMA to TDMA technology. SBC also owns GSM operator Pacific Bell Wireless.
The far reach and success of GSM, especially in Europe and parts of Asia, is leading Nagel and others to believe TDMA/GSM will become the global standard, a point driven home several times during the course of the three-day UWCC Global Summit. Equipment manufacturers Nortel Networks Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc. have developed backbone equipment and software that can support both standards, and dual-standard handsets are coming, according to AT&T and Siemens AG, which plan to introduce TDMA/GSM handsets by the end of the year and in the first quarter of next year, respectively.
One true global standard, however, will be forever elusive, according to Cena.
“That’s the absolute Holy Grail that will never happen,” said Cena. “I don’t think one technology is going to win. Everybody wants a migration path to third-generation wireless. We’ll always have multimode phones, multifrequency phones, etc.”
Cena said there is even speculation circulating that AT&T is going to bid on a 750 MHz license and use it for wideband-CDMA, a 3G solution which adds both data and voice capacity, but AT&T has denied this.
“We do not believe whatsoever that EDGE will not be an excellent solution,” said Jim Grams, vice president of the technology development group for AT&T Wireless, during a panel discussion regarding the TDMA/GSM alliance. “We don’t yet understand the demand for very high data rate services.”
Good indications of just how much demand there will be for data services will likely emerge out of the Latin American TDMA markets, where BellSouth International has reported year-over-year growth of 81 percent, driven strongly by prepaid. Other offerings such as short message service and location-based information delivered to a customer’s handset will help drive demand for data and test the future capabilities of EDGE.
“Location is required not only for 911 because of the regulations, but it will also be required to provide the kinds of services that consumers want,” said Mark Licht, president of SigmaOne Communications, a provider of wireless location technology solutions.
Ed Snyder, wireless equipment analyst with Hambrecht & Quist, also emphasized the value of location-based services.
“The more you can focus a person’s location, the more value you can extract. Location-based information will become more valuable than the mobile phone itself,” Snyder said.
Much work lies ahead for the TDMA community before enhanced data services, or even ubiquitous voice coverage, are in place, and Sprint PCS put the pressure on when it announced a limited rollout of 1XRTT by mid-2001. Still, Licht said TDMA, like all the standards, is going to evolve.
“The market has shown at the end of the day, TDMA has proved itself to be a very robust technology and it’s not going to go anywhere,” said Licht.
