WASHINGTON-An International Telecommunication Union task group in June in Beijing approved a carrier-crafted plan to harmonize competing U.S. and European CDMA technologies for Internet-friendly third-generation mobile phones, paving the way for the compromise to be translated into a new, global-roaming standard by year’s end.
ITU is also poised to approve a TDMA global 3G standard by the end of 1999.
The Operators Harmonization Group, a collection of wireless carriers, struck a deal recently in Toronto to converge cdma2000 technology-championed by some U.S. operators and vendors including Qualcomm and Lucent-and the wideband CDMA technology advocated by European vendors Nokia and Ericsson as well as by carriers around the world that operate GSM systems.
AirTouch Communications, whose merger with Britain’s Vodafone played a major role in moving the 3G process beyond the cantankerous debate among manufacturers, believes major progress has been made.
“The important thing is to stop the squabbling,” said Jonathan Marshall, a spokesman for AirTouch. “I’m sure it didn’t hurt [the 3G process] that we’re going to be the largest buyer in the world.”
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Earlier this year, an agreement was reached among U.S. and European wireless executives on an umbrella CDMA standard that included three operational modes and varying chip rates.
But the umbrella approach, being as broad as it was, gave rise to suspicions that proponents of cdma2000 and W-CDMA simply would go their own ways and thereby defeat the goal of worldwide CDMA compatibility.
“We can’t help but be pleased by this development. We moved it out of the political area,” said John Giere, vice president of marketing at Ericsson.
Giere said Ericsson is optimistic about the timetable and deployment of 3G, which should begin to hit the market by 2001.