http://www.eetasia.com/MAGAZINE/EDNOTE0411B.HTM The 3GSM World Congress, the GSM Association's annual conference held September 27 to October 1 this year in Singapore brought to the fore varied interests of silicon vendors, cellphone companies and GSM network operators. Not surprisingly, operators called for cheaper handsets and even donation by handset makers of IP related to older technologies to countries like China. And not surprisingly, at least one handset maker—Nokia—was guarded in its response to that plea. Almost everyone agreed on pushing 3G (W-CDMA) deployment. To that end, a number of technical and infrastructure issues are being ironed out. While almost all data revenue currently comes from plain SMS, a recent GSM Association initiative solves MMS interoperability issues with "hubs" through which all interconnections radiate. This system is being proposed to replace the current method requiring bilateral agreements, testing, billing and settlement. The 3GSM World Congress had mostly good things to say about 3G in September. Operators were pondering over the cost of setting up the 3G infrastructure and the content that would rake in the revenue. Companies like NEC were talking about High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which is claimed to double W-CDMA network capacity and increase download data speeds five-fold. And everyone was quick to point out that WLAN at public hotspots is complimentary to 3G. Market research firm EMC had forecast that the number of 3G subscribers will grow from 13.385 million worldwide by the end of this year to 300 million by the end of 2009, with Asia accounting for 43 percent. EMC is a division of Informa, the company that organized the 3GSM World Congress in Singapore. And just when the cellular business is looking upbeat, a new wireless technology from the computer industry is set to shake things up. WiMax, or IEEE 802.16, is a wireless broadband technology that has backing from Intel. What can WiMAX achieve? In a cell radius of 3km to 10km, WiMAX systems are expected to deliver up to 40Mbps per channel. Mobile network deployments will provide up to 15Mbps capacity in cell radius of up to 3km. Since all 3G and 4G cellular standards derive sustenance from data-centric capabilities, WiMAX indeed threatens 3G even before it takes off. Yet, at least one analyst argues that WiMAX cannot compete with the global coverage enjoyed by mobile operators. This is why that analyst, Forrester Research, predicts that 4G handsets will combine 3G and WiMAX. While we are pondering over WiMAX, the IEEE has begun work on yet another standard, the P802.22. This one allows the deployment of wireless regional area networks utilizing unused spectrum typically reserved for TV channels, while not interfering with licensed services in the TV bands (see this issue's In Focus section). As Forrester points in the WiMAX case, a number of technologies may eventually get integrated on a the handset. While the consumer may not need all of them, he would still have to bear the cost of extra silicon and design IP. Too many standards are about as bad as no standards at all. The need to support all of them drives up costs for both silicon vendors and handset manufacturers. At a time when there is demand for low-cost handsets, this could eventually mean lower profit margins. For engineers in Asia, each standard will present its own set of design challenges. To design more than one technology into a single handset will require some innovative thinking. |