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There once was a mad fisherman who blamed starfish for his poor catches (nobody quite knows why). So he caught every starfish he could and cut them into little pieces and threw them back into the sea. Little did he know that any piece of a starfish that contains a piece of the center could grow into a whole new starfish. Gradually the sea around him filled with tiny, but growing starfish. In despair, the fisherman threw himself into the sea.
Standards organizations are often like starfish. Although they claim to be interested in unity, their penchant and capacity for reproduction seems limitless. Not many years ago, AMPS from EIA and TIA standards organizations was seen as a shining beacon of compatibility and ubiquity, compared to the multiple flickering candles of analog in Europe. But then the Europeans decided that the major flaw of AMPS was that it was not digital, and ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) invented GSM, the new powerhouse of wireless. Not to be outdone, U.S. carriers invented the TDMA digital technology D-AMPS (IS-54 and ANSI-136), although almost immediately after that decision, a breakaway group decided that CDMA was a better system. After CDMA started to develop a loyal following in the U.S. and Asia, Europeans started to lust after that technology, and began talking about W-CDMA, distinguished largely by its incompatibility with U.S. (IS-95) CDMA.
3G systems are, of course, going to solve the compatibility problem once and for all – not! While the development of third generation technologies are causing major re-alignments, similar patterns of partial compatibility and even complete incompatibility are being retained. You just can’t teach an old starfish new tricks.
There are two groups developing standards for 3G systems, confusingly named 3GPP and 3GPP2 (perhaps “3GPP too” would have been a better name). 3GPP is home to those weaned on GSM and D-AMPS systems, and sees W-CDMA as the ultimate future system. 3GPP2 is for those who are fans of cdmaOne (TIA/EIA-95) and cdma2000 (IS-2000). From a network perspective, 3GPP is based on the GSM MAP (Mobile Application Part – the network protocol that binds GSM systems together) with bridges to ANSI-41 to provide compatibility with D-AMPS/ANSI-136 systems. 3GPP, for example, just became the new global home for GSM standardization, from its previous regional home at ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). 3GPP2, on the other hand, is most focused on ANSI-41 networks, but is strongly interested in compatibility with GSM systems for roaming. Their relationship with U.S. standards is shown by the tight coupling between its organization and the TIA TR-45 standards committee (with the notable exception of TR-45.3 that standardizes ANSI-136).
3GPP (www.3gpp.org), the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, is a coalition of standards associations developing a suite of 2.5G to 3G wireless systems derived from GSM and ANSI-136. The major partners are ETSI from Europe, ATIS T1 from North America, CWTS from China, TTA from Korea and TTC and ARIB from Japan. The group is organized into several TSGs (Technical Specification Groups):
IS-95 CDMA proponents realized that if their favorite technology was labeled as 2.5 G, the world would quickly swing towards W-CDMA as a sole standard. This would leave companies (largely in the Americas and Asia) that had made major investments in IS-95 systems stranded with networks incompatible with the rest of the world. Although they were invited to join 3GPP by ETSI, they decided instead to create 3GPP2 (www.3gpp2.org) as a place where their standardization could occur, hoping that a new multi-national organization would avoid the “Made in the USA” label of TIA standards such as IS-95.
Confusingly enough, not only does 3GPP2 have a similar name, but it has almost the same group of partners – ARIB and TTC from Japan, TTA from Korea and CWTS from China. The major difference is that ETSI, the initiator of 3GPP, is replaced by the TIA in 3GPP2. This seems strange, but in Japan, Korea and China there is an internal split between companies allied with 3GPP (such as NTT) and those allied with 3GPP2 (such as the recently merged IDO/KDD/DDI). To add to the confusion, 3GPP2 has also divided its standardization responsibilities into TSGs. Most of these have a sibling relationship with a TIA TR-45 subcommittee, and usually meet during the same week and in the same location:
It was perhaps too much to ask for the world to give up its regional interests entirely and settle on a single 3G wireless standard. Optimistically, the presence of only two 3G standardization groups is a positive sign, compared to the many groups creating formal or defacto standards for first and second generation systems. And, with both groups working cooperatively on the same 3G security standards (AKA), and with both groups having an interest in GSM MAP/ANSI-41 interoperability, it may be possible to significantly enhance the level of services provided to international roamers who do dare to cross the 3GPP/3GPP2 boundary. If only we can stop the mad fisherman from slicing and dicing, the world may be only one step, well maybe two steps, away from a truly universal and ubiquitous wireless world.
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