Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Mission impossible or mission plausible?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 17:42:18 -0500

Posted on Fri, Dec. 19, 2003
Mission impossible or mission plausible?
By Jon Fortt
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

Mikko Uusitalo resembles a Finnish Clark Kent with his thin-rimmed oval glasses,
buttoned up white shirt, and boyishly clean-shaven face. It may be a good thing,
too; if Uusitalo is to succeed at his mission, he could use some super-human
luck.
As chairman of the Wireless World Research Forum, Uusitalo's task is getting
dozens of self-interested manufacturers, service providers and governments
across the globe to agree on a vision for the nuts and bolts of tomorrow's cell
phone networks. This technology, often called fourth-generation or "4G"
wireless, probably won't arrive for another 10 years.

When 4G does arrive, it could operate at 100 megabits per second -- nearly 10
times faster than most of the wireless hotspots that laptop users are gushing
about today.

Uusitalo's mission offers a glimpse at the ways the global wireless business can
imitate politics. The U.S. approach has been to let companies and technologies
joust for survival, expecting that the best will prevail. The European approach,
which Uusitalo is following, has been to gather everyone around the table and
try to find a single solution. Once there is a standard, battle begins.
Bringing the WWRF's European approach to the world stage will be a challenge --
and it's part of the reason why Uusitalo visited Silicon Valley this month to
gather support for his eclectic group. Its 150 members include the Department of
Trade and Industry in the United Kingdom, the Institute for Infocomm Research in
Singapore, Samsung in South Korea, and Intel in the United States.
"It would be a win-win situation for all if the competition for the right
approach was made at an earlier stage -- that would be a major change," said
Uusitalo, whose day job is manager of research cooperation for cell phone giant
Nokia's research center. "This has some aspects of what you might call
gentleman's war."

The goal, in part, is to avoid a repeat of the situation in the United States
where there are three major incompatible cell phone networks, CDMA, GSM, and
iDEN, fighting for survival. In Europe there is one: GSM.
Still, the global climate right now can be harsh toward diplomats.

"It's very hard to reach consensus on much of anything right now because we seem
to have a clash of ideas and ideals," said Nancy Snow, a communications
professor at Cal State Fullerton. "It affects the business sector, it affects
politics."
Not everyone thinks the European early-consensus approach is better than
gloves-off competition from the start.
There are advantages to both approaches: The largest U.S. carrier, Verizon,
maintains a CDMA network different from the dominant global standard, and the
company is pushing ahead with an upgrade called 1x EVDO that will offer data
speeds faster than what Europe has to offer. On the other hand, consumers in
Europe have a choice of more advanced cell phone technologies, and can switch
more easily between wireless providers.

Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is among
those who question the necessity of the united approach. During a visit to the
Mercury News, he pointed out that while European countries all operate on the
same type of GSM/GPRS network, the monolithic approach hasn't helped them to
bring the faster 3G EDGE wireless networks into being.
"They destroyed 3G for themselves, for the most part," Powell said. Plus, he
suggested, future cell phone chips will enable phones that operate on any global
network. "If your phone has a chip in it that can pick any spectrum, why do you
care what they pick? You've swung the intelligence to the handset, and the
handset makes those decisions for you."

Uusitalo wants to have basic 4G blueprints hashed out by 2007, when his group is
scheduled to present a plan to the International Telecommunications Union, a
United Nations agency that designates certain bands of frequencies for use in
regions across the globe. His task, for now, is to grow his coalition and keep
most people feeling like harmonious shepherds, not rebellious cowboys.
That could require a man of steel, but Uusitalo does like a challenge. Rather
than use the bridge and drive to work every day in his native Finland -- he
lives across a lake from his Nokia office -- during the warm season he pulls out
a kayak and paddles himself to work for 20 minutes.

"Certainly there will be some cowboys," Uusitalo allows. "This is a free world.
If you want to be a cowboy, that's good for you. Be a cowboy."

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/business/7529984.htm

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