NEW YORK-“In Motorola’s view, the technology for 2.5 generation is really here,” said Moe Grzelakowski, senior vice president and general manager of 3G for Motorola Inc.
In Japan later this year, Motorola plans to deploy commercially a nationwide 64-kilobyte, high-speed data network. Next year, also in Japan, it will roll out commercially a nationwide General Packet Radio Service network (GPRS), which has a 32-kilobyte capacity that is fast enough for Internet access, she said.
“Wireless data isn’t happening in the United States the way it is in Europe and Japan, where short messaging service accounts for more than 40 percent of mobile originations,” Grzelakowski told attendees at the Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp. “Wireless and Satellite Conference.”
Motorola, until lately, “hasn’t been super-involved in harmonization” of third-generation wireless standards, Grzelakowski noted. “Wideband CDMA is close enough to cdma2000 that further harmonization is possible, and we are likely to end up with one major RF access standard that 90 percent of the world converges on,” she said.
Third-generation wireless, Internet Protocol telephony and calling party pays likely will drive increases in subscribers and minutes of use.
By 2005, Motorola expects there to be a billion people in the world with both wireless telephony and Internet access. By comparison, at the end of 1998, wireless subscribers numbered 300 million and Internet customers, 200 million.
“IP transport creates a seamless way to move around multiple networks. It’s an enabler creating convergence among media, telecommunications and computers,” Grzelakowski said.
“The applications and technology for the Internet are here, but the end-to-end solution is not here. We don’t want wireless vendors to be just dumb pipe providers.”
The Motorola executive said wireless telecommunications today lacks value-added services, including: personalization, preference selection, prioritization of information and contact, bandwidth on demand, analytic capability and location services. In particular, wireless carriers need to capitalize on their unique ability to provide location services, “which will allow them to take the lead in offering other new services,” she said.
