CDMA potential rival to the GSM

[Nguyen Hoang Ha <tca68369@ait.ac.th>]

Bangkok Post, Tuesday 11, 1997

EURO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE BATTLES N.AMERICA ON CELLULAR STANDARD

European telecommunication giants LM Ericsson Telefon AB and Nokia Corp
announced here yesterday their support for a Japanese proposal to develop
a new cellular standard for the 21st century.

The cooperation effort with NTT DoCoMo of Japan pits them against North
American giants who announced last week their own standards for the
so-colled third generation system for cellular systems.

The Euro-Japanese alliance was announced in a joint statement by Sweden's
Ericsson and Finland's Nokia at Asia Telecom's 97, the industry leading
regional trade show.

The statement said the two companies "are also lending their support to
joint efforts by Asian and European authorities to standardise
third-generation technology."

"It's a very tricky situation," Ericsson's vice president for marketing
and sales, Ake Persson, told AFP.

He said the two rival future systems are "fundamentally different"
technologies that are currently incompatible.

Last week, North American firms Motorola, Lucent technologies, Qualcomm
and Northern Telecom announced they are working on their on system based on
the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system.

CDMA, now used largely in the United States and a few other countries, is
said to be a potential rival to the current international standard, the
Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication system.

The European-Japanese proposal is based on a GSM-compatible system called
the wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) technology.

Asked if the world telecommunications industry was splitting up into two
camps for developing future cellular standards, Persson said:"It looks
like that is the situation right now."

"We are trying to align Japan, Asia and Europe and we're doing that from a
very strong base...," he added.

In the joint statement, Nokia Telecommunications president Matti Alahuhta
said the third-generation system "is only as good as its underlying
network infrastructure."

He said the GSM core network "is widely regarded as the most open and
robust wireless system in the World."

The statement said the new WCDMA format offers a "smooth migration path"
for current users of the GSM network, which is forecast to serve 300
million subscribers by 2001, when the first WCDMA systems are expected to
be commercially operating.

Last week, the North American CDMA backers, who also met in Singapore,
said their system offered clearer sound, longer battery life and enhanced
security from eavesdropping than rival systems