OXFORD, United Kingdom-Second-generation cellular has not been an entirely satisfactory experience for the United States. “We pulled up the beaches and said we are Island America,” said Tom Wheeler, chief executive officer of the U.S. Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. But since then the wireless world has become global, and isolated islands are no longer acceptable. “If we allow ourselves to fractionate worldwide in [third-generation] as we did with the myopic U.S. vision of 2G, then shame on us,” stated Wheeler.
“Today’s wireless world means we have to work together. We have a lot more in common now than we had in the past,” added Wheeler. “The difference between man and animals is the ability to learn from experience. Now’s our chance.”
Sharing the same platform at a recent London conference, Mike Short, director of international affairs at U.K. operator Cellnet, also shared Wheeler’s sentiments. Speaking on behalf of the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) community, Short declared, “We are not being protectionist in any way; we are trying to grow an industry.”
Qualcomm Inc. has a different perspective on GSM, arguing persistently that Europe has adopted protectionist policies through the award of GSM licenses.
That stance was rejected firmly by Nicholas Argyris, director of telecommunications at DGXIII in the European Commission, in his keynote address at the UMTS 98 conference in Rome. “Some of the U.S. advocates of CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) are seeking to turn standards into a political issue,” said Argyris. “Behind the arguments for backward compatibility and global harmonization may lurk the desire to increase the value of [intellectual property right] portfolios.
“We do not have a Fortress Europe mentality in terms of technology for 3G,” stated Argyris. “But we do have a preference.” That preference is, of course, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s (ETSI’s) Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS).
But Europe will be open to other standards, argued Argyris, none too convincingly. “We do not exclude the possibility of other 3G technologies being licensed in the European Commission,” he said. “If other spectrum becomes available or if not all spectrum is used for UMTS.”
Naturally, the commission supports its offspring, ETSI. “I am pleased to see that ETSI has been able to respond promptly to the false accusations and misrepresentations leveled against its activities, its intentions and its rules,” said Argyris.
ETSI seems to be hedging its bets. “Global roaming is what we have to concentrate on,” said David Hendon, chairman of ETSI. “That doesn’t mean we need a global standard.”
ETSI nevertheless has set up a UMTS Globalization Group, reported Karl Heinz Rosenbrock, ETSI director-general, with the objective of “enabling UMTS specifications to be prepared and promoted in a manner which makes them attractive to global partners such that they will be implemented worldwide.”
No such prevarication is evident at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). “We are confident we will have a global standard,” stated Fabio Leite, counselor for IMT-2000 at the ITU. The ITU clearly is furious about attacks on its authority in the global standardization arena, including an attempt to declare the ITU’s approach anti-competitive under the World Trade Organization agreement.
“The great majority of manufacturers from all over the world, including the [United States], who have been closely involved in first- and second-generation cellular communications, are playing a key role in the development of third-generation systems. There is indeed a very vocal minority which are taking positions apart from the ITU’s approach to third-generation development, but the aim of the silent majority has always been to create advanced technical standards which would deliver value to the end user,” said the ITU official documentation.
Already there is movement toward reducing the number of candidates for the 3G air interface. Asok Chatterjee, vice president of technology at ADC Telecommunications and chairman of U.S.-based ANSI (American National Standards Institute) T1P1 committee, announced to the Rome meeting that TR46 and T1P1 had agreed to merge wideband-CDMA/NA and WIMS into one proposal.
Karl Heinz Rosenbrock announced that ETSI, Japan’s ARIB, Korea’s TTC and T1 are forming a 3G Partnership Project to work toward GSM-based 3G system specifications.
An equivalent partnership project has been discussed between U.S., Japanese and South Korean players to work toward IS-41-based 3G specifications.
“That’s not a maybe,” said Chatterjee. “I think it’s going to happen.”
Whether those two projects will ever converge to produce a harmonized proposal is another matter. “Harmonization for the sake of harmonization is not a good thing,” stated Chatterjee.
But convergence is still Qualcomm’s expressed desire, the company repeated mid-October in a letter to the ITU. It is unlikely the letter was received sympathetically at the ITU.
Qualcomm’s letter makes its IPR position very clear. Stating that it holds essential IPR for several of the air-interface proposals, Qualcomm confirms it is willing to license its IPR for the cdma2000 proposal. But it is unwilling to commit to license its IPR for “the W-CDMA proposal submitted by ETSI and its three derivatives, the W-CDMA proposal submitted by Japan’s ARIB, the CDMA II proposal submitted by Korea’s TTA and the W-CDMA/NA proposal submitted by T1P1.”
IPR policies for the remaining candidate proposals are not yet disclosed.
Qualcomm and IPR are inextricably linked, of course. The company seems to trade on its IPR more than on sales of services or manufactured goods, an approach that is alien to many Europeans and frequently misunderstood. Such an approach often results in conflict.
L.M. Ericsson has been feuding with Qualcomm since the acrimonious disputes surrounding the introduction of second-generation digital cellular standards in the United States.
Ericsson currently is locked in a legal battle with Qualcomm over essential patents for narrowband CDMA, claiming to be the true inventor of the soft-handoff concept, fundamental to IS-95. End-October saw the renewal of Ericsson’s three key patents in this area by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, conveniently in time for the scheduled February 1999 trial with Qualcomm in the United States.
Qualcomm has been misleading the industry and the legal process by alleging that Ericsson had agreed to surrender its soft-handoff patents, according to a statement from Ericsson.
“Qualcomm is making a deliberate attempt to try its case outside of the courthouse, regardless of the current legal process,” said Larry Lyles, vice president and general counsel of Ericsson Inc.
Qualcomm’s IPR stance over 3G technology is dismissed by many in the GSM community.
“This is nothing new,” said J.T. Bergqvist, senior vice president, radio access systems at Nokia Telecommunications. “There are still outstanding patent issues in GSM.” No single company would have the ability to block future 3G developments, Bergqvist believes. “There will be a number of claims from a number of sources, and the international community will have to handle them,” he said. “This is business as usual.”
The ITU is taking a similarly firm approach.
“There is a growing consensus committed to developing a single global standard for third generation based around the ITU IMT-2000 concept. Given the glittering prize that 3G represents, attempts by any party to hinder the development process will likely be regarded with considerable disfavor by the growing majority which supports the ITU approach.”
