At the GSM Association we believe third-generation Global System for Mobile Communications (3GSM) will truly mean an exciting worldwide revolution in human communications. It will be a revolution that enables people around the globe to have high-speed, personal access to electronic information when and where they want it.
3GSM will result in a revolution of new high-technology, educational, medical, business, personal and emergency life-saving confidential communication services and features that will dramatically change, and improve the quality of our lives.
The evolved 3GSM will provide wireless customers with the same Internet and data capabilities that they have with their wired services today. That is to say, it will include voice, plus e-mail, plus web access, plus access to all other forms of online data and information.
To put this in perspective, remember that when cellular was introduced in the US in the mid ’80s, business communications consisted of voice and paper.
When you left the office and were able to take your voice communications (telephone) with you, you had everything you wanted. Letters could be faxed to remote locations when needed.
With 3GSM, road warriors, and the rest of humanity, will have access to all of the high-tech and high speed communications services they expect, whether they are in a meeting in Chicago or on a ferry in Hong Kong harbor.
But we believe that if this revolution is to fulfill its potential, it must do so through a carefully planned and well-designed network evolution. Through the shared knowledge, expertise, resources and collective efforts of the GSM Association’s member companies, our development path into 3GSM is clearly mapped out and brings with it possibilities for new age data and multimedia applications.
This technical evolutionary path takes us from today’s GSM (2GSM) through GPRS (GSM Packet Radio Service), to EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) and on to 3GSM (or W-CDMA, Wideband-CDMA).
With more than 360 million customers in over 140 countries, GSM today represents the world’s fastest growing and most popular wireless service . This global presence reflects the diverse interests of the more than 400 GSM, satellite and 3rd Generation networks operators, regulator and administrative bodies and key manufacturers and suppliers who comprise the GSM Association.
One of the great things about GSM is the sheer volume of what’s being manufactured and sold has enabled cost levels for operators to come down to a profitable level, which ultimately allows the consumer to get more and more value from wireless services. This has a lot to do with how the Association developed the GSM technology platform in the first place.
This has brought telephone communications to areas that otherwise have no telephone service. Which means there are millions of people who have made their first calls in fact, their only calls on wireless and in most cases GSM wireless.
Through the efforts of Association work groups and task forces, representing the expertise and knowledge of member companies from all over the world, GSM has and always will continue to pioneer, improve and evolve as a total wireless system.
The Association has already become the focal point for 3rd Generation systems and operators, with a clear mandate and mission to manage all common and inter-operator issues-the first licensed 3rd Generation operators are now members of the Association.
I am confident our GSM Global Network will evolve, with wireless, satellite and cordless systems offering greatly expanded services, including high speed, multimedia data services, built-in support for parallel usage of such services and seamless connection with the Internet and wire-line networks. This will see the true convergence between various communications means and networks becoming a reality.
Potential obstacles
What obstacles does our organization face? The short direct answer to this in the near term is “quantity and quality” of terminals.
If third generation wireless services are to succeed, we must ensure that the early adopters and the majority of new users are impressed by the quality of performance, price, availability, reliability and functionality of the terminals. The GSM Association will continue to take a leadership role in making that happen.
I think it is very telling that when we asked a number of leading wireless manufacturers to showcase their images on our Association Web site www.gsmworld.com of how the 3GSM phone, handset, terminals or device of the near future might look, we got some very new and exciting designs. There will be a lot of change-inside and out.
A wide variety of styles and sizes of handsets are being developed to meet the individual needs of users. 3GSM will offer new Internet and multimedia services that will require convenient viewing screens. Handsets could vary from wrist-watch style `simple’ telephones to palm type terminals for multimedia web-browsing usage.
So I see the challenge for manufacturers in the short-term-based on past experiences-will be to produce devices in large enough volume to meet the expected demand of early adopters around the world-without impeding production of popular second generation wireless handsets.
With the first 3rd Generation networks due to be launched in Japan in early 2001, and with European countries following in early 2002, 3rd Generation is already a tangible reality.
As we go forward, we must also develop effective efficient roaming, including billing capabilities. Global roaming for third generation is vital. No matter how big a carrier is, it will always need to allow its customers to roam on to other systems and vice-versa.
This is one of the factors that made GSM dominant in the past and will necessitate the same in the future.
We must also continue to have open standards and defined interfaces to ensure the economies of competition and scale that GSM has enjoyed. We must concentrate on those areas where we can “enable” ever-improving networks.
It will also be important to manage expectations of the user community. It has been my experience that in regards to wireless, some people believe it can do everything and others believe it can do nothing. They are both incorrect, but the “everything” crowd can be more trouble when they expect wireless to act as a “wirelesswire”-without limitations. The best wireless systems are well integrated into the wired world.
And we are including other industries in the ongoing development of 3GSM, as this is no longer just “wireless” This is as much an extension of the Internet and computing, as it is of wireless voice communications.
The GSM Association is playing many roles in making all this happen. It will draw on the experience, expertise and talents of the leading minds of today’s industry, harnessed with the powerful combination of global dialogue to ensure that the next era of GSM communications will be successfully deployed around the world.
Surprises about 3G
What will surprise people about 3G services? I guess that all depends on the people you ask.
If you ask the wireless consumer of the next decade, I’m sure it will take a lot to surprise them. They will have come to expect-if not demand-that they have instant, high-speed access to information, entertainment, banking, etc., whenever, wherever and however they want it.
I suspect that the transition from where we are today to where we’ll be 10 years from now is probably as hard to paint as from ten years ago to today. However looking back 10 years should provide us a pretty good idea of the enormity of the opportunity that is ahead of us as we step into a new dimension of 3G services.
The convergence of multimedia and other forms of communications and entertainment will be not unlike the magnitude of t
he last merger that went from radio technology and car telephones to pocket electronic consumer tech devices in a way that rea
lly was not predicted.
In 1990, we had car telephones, some portables, business communications, limited e-anything, and a view towards tens of millions of mobile phones worldwide by the end of the decade.
Today, we have a huge consumer base, small in pocket phones, hundreds of millions of truly personal communications devices. Kids with SMS (Short message Service), young adults that don’t plan where to meet after work, “just call me.”
For consumers of today, I believe the most unexpected part of 3GSM will be the role that entertainment will play and the ingenuity of the actual mobile devices.
When you look at changes of this magnitude and certainly the enormous investment associated with it, the 3GSM opportunities are immense.
There’s no doubt that 3GSM operators will look back in five years on the business case they build today and say, well some bits were right and some parts were far better than we thought and some parts we just missed the mark. But undoubtedly, there will be unexpected surprises.
At last year’s GSM World Congress someone quoted Darwin to the effect that the survivors were not necessarily the biggest, nor the strongest, but the most adaptable. The ability to adapt and the ability to provide what customers want is the key to success.
Jim Healy is chairman of the GSM Association.
