Originally posted at http://www.ayg.com/wireless/Article.po?type=Article_Archives&page=1328072
Third Generation wireless. 3G. The words are said in the same reverent tones that Arthur's Knights of the Round Table used to talk about the Holy Grail, or science fiction fans use to talk about Skywalker Ranch. But, does 3G just mean a fatter wireless pipe? Will the advent of third generation networks mean the industry's problems are over? Will it stay crispy, even in milk?
It's a good thing the term 3G was coined, because the documentation for the third generation specification would choke an army of horses. The Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) web page listing the titles of all of the 3G spec is 1.3 megabytes. To save you the trouble of reading each page in the spec, let's boil this down a tad.
When someone is talking about third generation wireless, they're referring to a framework set by the International Telecommunication Union in 2000. The spec calls for transmission speeds of 144 kilobits per second inside a moving vehicle, and two megabits per second in a stationary position, or fixed location. It encompasses the whole alphabet soup of wireless standards, including (but not limited to) Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000, Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service (UMTS), Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), and Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA). We'll look at these standards in detail in the coming weeks, and how they'll impact the 3G landscape.
The specification also covers what 3G will be used for, with allocations for common billing and user profiles across different carriers, and support of multimedia services such as bandwidth on demand, mail storage and forwarding.
So, which pathway will work the best? Which one will you be using when you head out the door from your local wireless parlor with your pricey mobile terminal? That depends on where you live -- literally. Different countries have different infrastructures already in place, and that dictates the network which will replace it.
In Europe, the GSM network which covers the continent will be replaced with W-CDMA. Japan is also going the W-CDMA route, where powerhouse carrier NTT DoCoMo has an estimated $8 billion invested in a nationwide W-CDMA network. A limited trial is underway (with mixed results -- the trial has had its share of stops and starts, but that's why it's called beta testing) with 4,000 users. China and South Korea seem to be headed for a CDMA2000 network.
At least there's some certainty on their shores. North America's road to 3G riches is fractured and winding. The majority of the confusion lies in the multitude of wireless carriers and networks in North America, and the state of the spectrum ownership in the United States. Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS are separately testing a 'bridge' version of CDMA2000 called 1XRIT, which doubles the voice capacity of current CDMA systems and speeds their data network up to 144 Kbits/sec. VoiceStream is headed to W-CDMA thanks to their GSM network, while AT&T has stated that they will use both WCDMA as well as TDMA-EDGE to get up to speed. Cingular has yet to make their network decision public, while Nextel has yet to figure out how to convert their iDEN network to a high-speed pipe.
Once these networks are (finally) in place, users will have to have brand new devices to support the bandwidth. These devices will come with a hefty price tag -- estimates for the first 3G terminals range from $250 - $600 in the outset, with monthly data plan rates of anywhere from $60 - $100.
What will subscribers be paying for that's worth the cash it will cost? The applications that will run on 3G devices should outpace the e-mail and stock quotes you find on current handsets. High-transfer rates will make rich media apps a lot more feasible, so those hybrid cameraphones the labs are dreaming up would be used for videoconferencing and video instant messaging. Mobile commerce will be given a shot in the arm, with quicker purchase times (hello, impulse buyers), better implementation of location-based services, and heightened security in the mix.
How long will this take? When will this bandwidth become available to the consumer? Japan has the headstart in getting their network online, and look to have both W-CDMA and CDMA2000 services available 2Q 2002. The European W-CDMA networks are estimated to begin trials late this year, with the switch getting thrown in 2003. All of the plans in the US took a hit in June 2001, when the FCC was told by an appeals court that the spectrum they had sold off from bankrupt carrier NextWave wasn't theirs to sell.
Ah, spectrum. The bane of wireless providers everywhere. The companies that spent billions of dollars to get portions of the radio spectrum to support their cellular and PCS networks now have to spend billions more to get chunks of the upper band of the spectrum to support the higher bandwidth necessary for 3G mobility. European carriers spent over $100 billion for their licenses, and the Bank of England quoted in February that $250 billion in loans to telecom companies to cover the cost of 3G licenses were taken out over the last twelve months. December's US auction of NextWave's bandwidth attracted 87 different carriers.
Of course, this is a very broad look at the coming revolution, akin to saying, "These knights went looking for a cup because their king told them to." In the coming weeks, we'll present the players and the tools in this ongoing saga (and, especially in this story, the players change from chapter to chapter), with a breakdown of the technologies involved and the regions that will benefit from them. The dragonslaying is up to you.