LAS VEGAS-With wireless innovations bursting at the seams, three top vendors have called on regulatory bodies to modify the existing rules and regulations to position the industry for future challenges.
The chief executive officers of Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp. and L.M. Ericsson-Christopher Galvin, Jorma Ollila and Kurt Hellstrom-insisted that regulators should address the cost and allocation of spectrum to ease the financial burdens on both carriers and vendors and free enough funds to invest in applications and solutions.
They called not only on the United States to provide more spectrum, but also said both the United States and Europe should find ways to reconcile their procedures and practices.
“We need to harmonize spectrum with the rest of the world so people can roam around the world,” said Motorola’s Galvin, insisting that in the next few years, 25 percent of Internet access will be wireless and even cars and other products will need services that require a lot of spectrum.
Motorola’s Galvin led the charge in a keynote conversation with Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association Chairman Tom Wheeler at the industry’s trade show last week in Las Vegas, saying vendors spent as much money on equipment as it cost carriers to acquire spectrum.
He suggested the industry would benefit from a long-term strategy that looks at the overall interests of the players in the carrier and vendor spaces as well as the consumers.
“Capital flows,” he said, “should benefit the consumer in the long run.”
Lamenting the drift of spectrum from the past when it was free to the present state of beauty contests and auctions-what Wheeler characterized as sometimes the equivalent of the popular television show, “Survivor”-Galvin said it was time for all regulatory bodies to meet with manufacturers and operators to fashion out a proper system for spectrum allocation that would eliminate greed and ensure the greater good of wireless communications.
One of his suggestions was phasing out payments for spectrum over a number of years.
“We have to come together to modify the rules or we will end up outstripping ourselves,” he said.
Nokia’s Ollila, who pitched in via live transmission, said spectrum availability was even more urgent in view of the evolution from voice to data in the anticipated third-generation environment.
“More capacity will be created,” he said, “as GPRS will be launched in the third quarter and it will be significant in the fourth quarter.”
Adding his voice to the conversation, Ericsson’s Hellstrom said another crucial element to the future is partnership between vendors and carriers to harmonize the offerings of both segments of the industry.
He said both ought to work together because the success of one depends on the success of the other.
“It is becoming more of a shared experience,” he said. Ollila said increasing consolidation in the industry called for “deep partnerships” because of the lengths of projects and comparative advantages of the partners.
Both Ollila and Galvin glowed about the future of 3G, especially the potential burst of multimedia, which is foreshadowed by the rolling out of GPRS phones both CEOs demonstrated before the convention audience.
Hellstrom added that it will be more common by 2003 to access the Internet through wireless than wired connections.
Galvin suggested that the gravitation to 3G challenges vendors and operators to create new applications and what he called “an extra element.”
“There has to be an extra element to it or the use of the mobile Internet will not grow fast,” he said.
