American wireless firms and the U.S. government are cautiously optimistic about a move the European Commission plans to make to open Europe to competing third-generation wireless standards.
The EC early this month plans to officially ask the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to standardize all technologies-including U.S. cdma2000 technology-that the International Telecommunication Union has accepted for the 3G market. Moreover, the EC will require ETSI to finish this process by the end of the year.
“The commission has realized that to comply with its WTO requirements, it needs to include a standard for all other RTTs,” said Colin Chandler, director of standards and regulatory issues with Qualcomm Europe in Sophia Antipolis, France. “Because this is not a standard produced by ETSI, it’s still in the early days as to how it’s going to do this.”
Paul Reid, ETSI’s 3G marketing officer, said the standards body is holding its General Assembly in Nice, France, this week, and the EC could bring up the matter there. ETSI members would have to vote and accept any mandate from the EC, he said.
The EC’s move comes amid continued pressure from the U.S. government over the matter. The ITU, the global standards body, has adopted multiple technologies for the 3G market, including a tri-mode Code Division Multiple Access-based standard that encompasses wideband CDMA technology and Interim Standard-95-based cdma2000 technology. ETSI, however, has only standardized W-CDMA technology and others designed for migration from Global System for Mobile communications technology. The United States successfully urged Japan in 1998 to begin looking at other 3G standards besides its chosen W-CDMA technology standard.
In response to the U.S. government’s concerns that Europe was closed to competing wireless technologies, European Union Commissioner Martin Bangemann last year indicated carriers could deploy whatever technology they wanted as long as at least one network used W-CDMA technology to allow for pan-European roaming.
But that became a revolving door, said one U.S. government official. Carriers are required to deploy an ETSI-approved standard.
“We had told them all along that we felt ETSI needed to embrace IMT-2000 standards in their entirety,” said a government source. “We felt we needed to put that in various talking points in letters sent back and forth. We were pushing for some signal that ETSI was going to do more than the original standard.”
EC representatives in the United States did not return phone calls. The EC had consistently maintained it did not have the power to control ETSI, said another U.S. official. Bangemann had maintained that the EU fully supported global harmonization of 3G technology but that decisions on this needed to be taken by the wireless industry. Bangemann said the EC would not interfere in such an industry-led process. U.S. officials last year even pressed L.M. Ericsson, which has a strong hand in ETSI, to push multiple standards into the standards-making group.
The U.S. government also is making sure that those who apply for 3G licenses in Europe are allowed to deploy any competing technology. This may always be a problem if some regulators tender licenses with technology stipulations. European regulators are expected to selectively tender, grant or auction 70 to 80 3G licenses this year.
U.S. firms are careful about the EC’s pending request, and many declined to comment until they see real progress.
“If this means operators can bid with whatever ITU standard they want, that’s good,” said Jim Takach, director of advanced programs with the CDMA Development Group, a group that has actively prodded the U.S. government to pressure Europe.
“We’ve been working with all governments to have open competition,” said Chris Pearson, vice president of marketing with the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium, the Time Division Multiple Access technology interest that is working with ETSI on the Enhanced Data rate for GSM Evolution, or EDGE standard. “If that was to occur, it’s a step in the right direction.”
