Unity is something more easily achieved as a goal rather than a reality. Let’s face it: It’s difficult to agree.
Ask a husband and wife where they would like to spend this summer’s vacation, and you are likely to get two different answers. Ask two siblings what they would like for supper and again, you’re likely to get one pizza and one peanut butter. But forget vacations and suppers: What happens when two people go to the video store? You come back with two different movies. (Why do you think Blockbuster video chains have become so prolific? I’m willing to bet late charges and the two-movie combo.)
But the wireless industry doesn’t seem to want to recognize the phenomenon that where there are a number of options (or for sake of argument, say standards), there will be some who choose A, some who choose B and some who choose C.
Even as the World Radiocommunication Conference gets under way in Istanbul, Turkey, governments are trying to figure out some parameters for the next generation of wireless service-a lofty goal.
But the nitty gritty continues back at home in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that lambastes AT&T Wireless Services Inc. for choosing TDMA technology. Meanwhile, Qualcomm Inc. prods the U.S. government to keep Japan open to cdma2000. GPRS, HDR and 1Xtreme proponents pooh-pooh each other’s technology. Editor Sandra Wendelken notes in the most recent Global Wireless that the standards fight taking place in Brazil is heating up, with the GSM community pushing for the 1800 MHz band to be opened and the TDMA and CDMA communities agreeing (for once) that the 1900 MHz band should be the chosen frequency.
The wireless industry is run by people who prefer wideband or narrowband, analog or digital, CDMA or TDMA or GSM, WAP or not, network-based E911 or handset-based E911.
Wireless equipment analyst Alex Cena told the audience at last month’s UWCC forum in Cancun, Mexico, there would never be one global standard. “That’s the absolute Holy Grail that will never happen,” said Cena of Salomon Smith Barney.
“I don’t think one technology is going to win. Everybody wants a migration path to third-generation wireless. We’ll always have multimode phones, multifrequency phones, etc.”
Amen. Let the holy wars continue.
