Chris Pearson is the president of 3G Americas, L.L.C. In his role as the senior operating officer of the trade organization, he is responsible for strategic planning of 3G Americas and provides executive management for the integration of strategy and operations in the areas of marketing, public relations, finance as well as public and regulatory affairs.
Q: What role does 3G Americas play in the wireless industry?
A: 3G Americas is an industry trade organization composed of telecommunications service providers and manufacturers. The organization’s mission is to promote and facilitate the seamless deployment throughout the Americas of the GSM family of technologies, including LTE. We are a voice for the GSM community in the Americas region. When we were formed in January of 2002, GSM represented only 8-10% of the market share in the Western Hemisphere. Today, GSM is the number one technology in the Western Hemisphere with a 64% market share.
Q: What position if any is 3G Americas taking on the development and deployment of so-called 4G technologies?
A: 3G Americas has supported LTE mobile broadband for quite some time as the next evolution of our technology after HSPA and we are glad to see the GSM Association endorse it as well. We believe LTE mobile broadband will be the leading OFDMA-based mobile broadband technology in the future as it builds upon the 2.9 billion customers of the GSM family of technologies today. Additionally, we look forward to seeing many CDMA operators choose LTE as their next evolution. Our 3G Americas member companies are heavily involved in the ITU process for IMT-Advanced, which is the correct name for the so-called 4G technologies and will likely include LTE.
Q: What advantages do you see for the technology being supported by 3G Americas?
A: The advantages for the GSM family of technologies including LTE are numerous and fall into two high level categories: technical capabilities and business merits. In technical capabilities, the LTE standard can compete with any other OFDMA technology in performance metrics. Recently, the 3GPP reported that LTE with 4×4 MIMO in 20 megahertz of spectrum should provide peak network theoretical rates of 326 megabits per second for the downlink and 86 Mbps for the uplink. Regarding business merits, there will be no other OFDMA technology that will have an ecosystem or subscriber base comparable to that of the GSM family of technologies with 2.9 billion subscribers. LTE mobile broadband will be a natural upgrade for HSPA operators around the world, and it will build upon the existing GSM family of technologies’ economies of scale and scope in chipsets, handsets, infrastructure and applications.
Q: What time frames do you see for the rollout of next-generation networks?
A: There are publicly announced LTE trials set for 2008 by major operators and their vendor partners like Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, Motorola and Nortel. We expect to see LTE mobile broadband product availability in late 2009 and 2010. Although it is unknown exactly when commercial roll-outs by operators with devices will occur, there have been announcements by operators that expect to launch LTE by 2011. Many of the 182 operators commercially offering HSDPA today will not rush to deploy LTE since HSPA has excellent performance characteristics and also has an extended future with HSPA+ (or evolved HSPA).
Q: Is there a place for a variety of next-generation technologies, or do you think there is a need to consolidate around a single standard?
A: Technological competition is good for the wireless industry and its customers. Competition drives innovation and timely deployments of network upgrades. The GSM family of technologies currently has 87% of the entire mobile cellular marketplace and provides a future-proof migration path to LTE for all operators. There is a place for a variety of next generation technologies. The GSM family of technologies including LTE is the current and future mobile wireless leader. I see no need to consolidate to a single radio interface standard.
