One of the big riddles with open standards is that not all of those who swear by the principle believe in it. Unless, of course, it works in their favor.
With a myriad of technologies in the market, vendors and carriers all see their technologies as enabling open standards.
“Everyone has their own ideas of what open standards are,” remarked Doug Grant, director of business development for radio-frequency and wireless systems at Analog Devices. “Some believe their standards are open even though they sell it, which means it is open if you pay for it.”
From broadband services to infrastructure to semiconductors, companies are putting the nuts and bolts together to ensure that all enabling technologies harmonize, especially at the interface level.
The Digital Home Networking Group, which seeks to simplify sharing digital content among cell phones, personal digital assistants, consumer electronics and other devices, is working toward that harmonization. The nonprofit group has pooled some of the big names in the broadband space, including Nokia Corp., NEC Corp., Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Samsung Electronics, IBM Corp., Panasonic, Sony Corp., Gateway, Sharp Electronics, Philips N.V., Kenwood, Lenovo, STMicroelectronics and Thomson.
The idea takes advantage of the PC to help create, edit, store and stream music, videos and photos to anywhere in the home. The group seeks a common platform that integrates cellular and broadband standards with Wi-Fi and Internet Protocol standards. Groups like these set guidelines for the technologies.
To build enabling technologies for this standard has cleared one hurdle; there is no schism created by a competing body, which likely would set its own guidelines to enable a different standard. Recently, the announcement of the Mobile Industry Processor Interface alliance caused a little stir in the industry as some experts saw it as a counterpunch to what has been perceived as a long-standing duopoly of Microsoft and Intel, known as WinTel.
MIPI was formed to focus on peripherals, microprocessors and software interfaces for mobile devices.
Some of these companies sometimes operate as though they have love lost with Microsoft and Intel, but both sides have expressed willingness to work together on this standard.
Sometimes the existence of one technology can make open standards a shoe-in. Example: XML. This technology has made it easy for voice to be used as a leverage for data and multimedia services. Major vendors including Lucent Technologies Inc., IBM and Starent Technologies recently announced messaging platforms in which XML plays an integral part. For example, using XML technology, Lucent’s messaging platform is able to deliver a variety of IP-based services like text, photos and video.
But despite the “openness” of open standards, there still can be rivals on opposite sides of the aisle. That is the case with the Common Public Radio Interface and the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative. L.M. Ericsson leads the CPRI, while Nokia leads the OBSAI.
Enabling an open standard is not just a technology issue, politics encrusts the activity. Both alliances sprung up to set standards for the various subsystems needed to make base stations. Both groups count influential companies as members. On CPRI, Ericsson cohabits with Siemens AG, Huawei Technologies Inc. and Nortel Networks Ltd. The Nokia-led OBSAI has 25 members, including LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, ZTE and Intel. NEC is the only player with dual membership.
CPRI says it “enables base-station manufacturers to focus their research and development efforts on their core competencies and to buy selected radio base-station subsystems.”
Nokia says OBSAI’s mission is different. “While we cannot comment specifically on the CPRI initiative as we are not a member, our understanding is that the scope of the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (launched in 2002) is more comprehensive as it is working for specification of four functional modules and three air interfaces, whereas CPRI is aiming to define only one interface,” commented Nokia spokeswoman Laurie Armstrong.
Thus, the irony of open standards is that alliances have to be created to affirm them and guidelines set for enabling technologies.
On a micro level, companies have to ensure that their gears fit into the larger puzzle. Kana Software’s forte is customer relationship management, and its solutions have to interoperate with J2ME, Palm and Microsoft.NET architectures as well as XML, explained H.A. Schade, senior director of product management and design.
MetraTech also uses the XML platform to enable data services.
“Without common data, it is hard for vendors to interchange,” remarked Jim Culbert, chief technology officer at MetraTech.
On the semiconductor side, the industry faces a dilemma: either vendors work within the baseband of the wireless devices, which is proprietary with Java for multimedia services, or they add processing capabilities, which consumes power and memory in an open standard.
Analog Devices, according to Grant, uses the baseband model. Part of the explanation for this is the power of voice, which still resides in the baseband. Voice is still the killer application.
SpeechWorks, which works within the open specifications of the Speech Application Language Tags forum, seeks ways to allow device users to access applications remotely with speech. The SALT forum has sent its specifications to the Worldwide Web Consortium.
“You need speech as the glue if you cannot look at the screen and can’t type-in,” said Rob Kassel, product manager of emerging technologies at SpeechWorks.
