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UbiNetics, in the vanguard of UMTS, expects reductions in the final implementation of the next generation of mobile telephones.
Cambridge, England
In England it is rare to see cyclists on the narrow roads in towns or out in the country. The university town of Cambridge thus stands out in contrast to other towns with the many cyclists who throng its network of streets. Here it is students on bikes who dominate much of the traffic, and in general the whole town is characterised by an environment created by the many young students.
To take advantage of the many attractions that this delightful town of Cambridge has for the bright students of Great Britain, the PA Consulting Group has located its Technology Centre just outside the town in a beautiful rural environment. The aim of this consulting company is to employ skilled personnel who will remain at the forefront of specialised development in the area of cordless communications. Many manufacturers thus use the PA Consulting Group to gaze into the crystal ball and anticipate the future or simply to obtain hard facts about such areas as the design of new mobile telephones.
The UMTS guide
As from 1 January the PA Consulting Group established UbiNetics as a company within a company, to supply hardware solutions in large quantities. It wished to act as more than simply a consultant in a growing market in the area of specialist mobile data and third generation (3G) mobile telephones and infrastructure.
Making use of the existing expertise within the PA Consulting Group in terms of the latest mobile telephone standards, UbiNetics has already taken a market lead in the area of the infrastructure for the next generation of mobile networks.
"UbiNetics is the only company that has developed test equipment for the manufacturers of third generation mobile networks. At the moment we have agreements with four of the five existing suppliers of infrastructure for the future systems," we are informed by Sales and Marketing Director Richard Watts.
He tells us that UbiNetics sees as a challenge the fact that the final UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Service) standard has not yet been decided within the frameworks of ITU’s IMT-2000 standard, which also includes the American cdma2000 standard.
"We are continually updating our test equipment each time changes are made to the standard. It would not pay us or any other companies involved in the future 3G market to wait until the standards are finalised, because we would then be two years behind in development," says Richard Watts.
He refers to an example of one of the ongoing adaptations which 3G manufacturers have had to examine, 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) the partnership adaptation of chip-rate in the UMTS standard, which it is harmonising with the Japanese WCDMA standard.
The PA Consulting Group has gained a great deal of knowledge about GSM, but highlighting the complexity of the next generation mobile standard, Richard Watts points out that it has been necessary for the PA Consulting Group and UbiNetics to employ mathematicians so that they can make good progress with the development of products.
Expected reductions
UMTS Forums’ target for the implementation of the first of the third generation high-speed mobile networks is the year 2002. This target has also been adopted by many big operators. However there are doubts at UbiNetics that specialist manufacturers of mobile telephones will be able to keep to this timetable, given that it is much faster than the imminent High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for GSM Evolution), 2.5 G telephones.
"Before Telecom 99 in June there were great expectations about the launch of the new GPRS telephones and modems, but it soon became clear at the conference that all manufacturers had experienced reductions. Some of them are now talking about the middle of 2000," explains Richard Watts. In this context the suppliers of infrastructure equipment will be much further down the road than the manufacturers of mobile telephones. A scenario Richard Watts hopes will repeat itself for 3G telephones. That is why UbiNetics also plans to introduce GPRS modems as a follow-up to the company’s existing dual band modems.
"When the mobile operators first introduce GPRS and are able to meet the present demand for more frequencies for GSM users, I believe many operators will not be so eager to launch into the next round of major investment in infrastructure," the Sales and Marketing Director forecasts.
"In Great Britain I would expect that the four established mobile operators, Orange, One2One, Vodaphone and Cellnet, will be outstripped by a new operator which will only implement the new 3G systems in the most populated areas, since too many costs are involved that the establishing of infrastructure in less populated areas," Richard Watts concludes.
In Denmark the Ministry of Research hopes to issue permits for the use of UMTS frequencies by October 2001. Time will tell how much of a hurry operators will be in to build up their networks. New mobile operators will also probably be the most motivated.
In short UbiNetics is the only manufacturer of test equipment for the development of UMTS systems.
The reduction of GPRS products is expected to reduce the implementation of third generation mobile networks.
New mobile operators will show the greatest motivation in investing in future UMTS networks.
