DUBLIN, Ireland-Many in the trunked radio industry view the rollout of mobile data services as the development that will drive their industry into the next millennium following the adoption last year of TETRA as the standard for next-generation trunked radio systems in Europe.
However, it is difficult to see how it will compete with GSM and ultimately third-generation mobile technology, which will offer greater data transmission speeds and already have massive market penetration across Europe and other parts of the world.
Commercial data applications currently being delivered over trunked radio include services that allow hotel guests to make advance reservations from the courtesy car that collects them from the airport so that credit-card payments are made before they actually arrive at the hotel.
“This type of application is becoming more widespread,” said Robyn Shalhoub, director of research and information services at Washington-based International Mobile Telecommunications Association, which represents trunked radio operators around the world. “However, monitoring and security services will (also) form a major part of future data services over trunked radio systems.”
For the future, she believes major manufacturers will be anxious to make the most of their investments in trunked radio technology by integrating it into future wireless applications, and this in itself will lead to more development of data services. “Companies have pumped a lot of money into trunked radio.”
In a recent interview, Bob Lovett, with Motorola’s commercial, government and industrial systems sector, said the TETRA standard would open up trunked radio systems to many new applications such as data and video transfer, in addition to voice.
He also claimed trunked radio is superior to GSM in several respects, such as for sending group messages.
“Trunked radio is an extremely efficient way of transmitting information,” he said. “The TETRA standard allows voice and data to be combined, moving away from voice dispatch to a situation where a request for service can be made as a data message. This means that the communications channels are not tied up with voice traffic and messages can be sent more accurately to the recipient, who now has a record of the message.”
The skeptics
However, Luca Tassan, an analyst at The Strategis Group in London, believes data over trunked radio has a limited future and that advancements in data over GSM will lead to much higher transmission speeds.
“Data speeds for trunked radio technology are low and limited,” he said, adding that using trunked radio systems for this type of traffic is a process of making the fullest use of what is essentially a voice network.
“Supporters of TETRA are talking about data speeds up to 14.4 kilobits per second, and even this is only achieved through the coupling of channels and some very complicated techniques. I don’t think those speeds will ever get much higher.”
Tassan has encountered several vendors that are positive about the future for this method of delivery, but admits he is uncertain as to why they are.
“Most of these companies are looking at providing messaging or low-speed text transfer rather than e-mail or Internet access. Trunked radio might be fine for text-based messaging, but if you are looking at sending images or large-scale file transfers, it just won’t work,” Tassan said.
Trunked radio systems will face intense competition for data traffic from GSM and ultimately third-generation mobile technology.
GSM data capabilities
Although use of data services has yet to meet the early ambitious targets set by GSM operators, many network operators believe this will change over the next few years.
Deirdre Cronnelly, of Irish mobile operator Esat Digifone, certainly shares this view. “About one-quarter of our corporate customers are using data over GSM, although in overall terms, that accounts for less than five percent of total traffic across our network,” she said.
The company expects more than half of corporate customers to be using these services by 2001.
“Several factors will dramatically increase data usage among corporate GSM customers, particularly higher speeds and changing demands from business users,” said Cronnelly.
She admits current data speeds make GSM suitable for nothing more than e-mail delivery and collection, but is confident faster transmission will open up Web browsing and other services to the masses. “Several networks have already increased to 14.4 kbps, and there are `spoofing’ and compression technologies that can deliver throughput speeds well in excess of that.” (Spoofing is a process whereby the network can be fooled into thinking a connection is continuous although the user might only dial in occasionally. It is used in combination with compression techniques to increase mobile data speeds and connection times.)
“When these systems are deployed on top of networks operating at 14.4 kbps, you can see how much higher data transmission speeds can go,” said Cronnelly. The length of time taken to set up a data call over GSM is also falling significantly, and current delays of up to 30 seconds are being reduced by more than 200 percent with new network technology.”
Mike Short, chairman of the GSM Association’s mobile data group, mentions future data speeds far in excess of anything achievable over trunked radio, with third-generation systems transmitting data at up to 2 Megabits per second.
However, he believes GSM offers other significant advantages. “GSM beats TETRA on economy-of-scale, coverage and functionality. For example, more than 150 million GSM handsets were sold last year, and that will increase to as much as 200 million in 1999.”
He also rejected the suggestion that trunked systems are more secure than GSM networks, pointing out that police forces and military organizations around the world are using GSM for communications.
“[GSM] is also moving into frequencies other than 900, 1800 or 1900 MHz for different applications.”
The onus thus is on trunked radio equipment manufacturers to encourage customers to use mobile data by making it as intuitive and comfortable as possible.
One of the factors that has restricted mobile data use among GSM subscribers is the difficulty in using the handsets for this purpose, and unless the trunked radio manufacturers address this issue, the network service providers will struggle to sign up enough customers for their non-voice based services.
