Will we get 3G services this year?<\/p>\n
Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id<\/p>\n
More than a year ago, I interviewed Bintang Juliarso,
\nQualcomm's former country manager for Indonesia. We talked about
\nCode Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology, what helped it
\nsurvive the dominance of the Global System for Mobile Phones
\n(GSM) as the standard for cellular phone networks, and what
\nprospects it might have in Indonesia going forward.<\/p>\n
An expatriate living in Bandung -- apparently himself a
\ntelecom consultant -- responded very harshly to my article, which
\nI had written based on my interview with Mr. Juliarso. I always
\nvalue feedback from my readers, but unfortunately this person's
\nLetter to the Editor sounded so arrogant and bullyragging that I
\nchose not to reply to it. He was actually one of the frequent
\nletter writers in the column, and what made me even more
\ndisappointed was that he was one of the writers that I had
\nadmired. In his letters, he always demonstrated a deep
\nunderstanding of telecommunications technologies and their
\nbusiness aspects.<\/p>\n
I agreed with him when he said that the industry would choose
\na technology not because it was sexy but rather because of the
\neconomies of scale that enabled it to serve more customers,
\ncharge them less and earn more profit. At the time, he was just
\nmoving to another country, and in his parting note -- appearing
\nin the letters' column a couple of days after he commented on my
\narticle -- he wrote, \"Be careful when talking about access
\nmethod. I have friends here and they will gladly forward to me
\nany such articles. You have been warned.\"<\/p>\n
I was warned. So, when I was recently offered the chance for
\nan exclusive interview with Dr. Irwin Mark Jacobs, Qualcomm's
\nfounder and CEO, I took the chance as I wanted to see whether I
\nwas really wrong in writing about CDMA's future in Indonesia,
\nwhich had triggered the bad side of this expatriate friend.<\/p>\n
Besides, if a CEO of an S&P 500 and a Fortune 500 company like
\nQualcomm is in town, something must be brewing.<\/p>\n
The race for 3G: CDMA, which is a digital system, builds on
\nthe analog cellular phone infrastructure, which we still have in
\nuse in Indonesia, Komselindo being one of the few operators.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, GSM, which is based on Time Division
\nMultiple Access (TDMA), is digital from the ground up.
\nOriginating from Europe, GSM is used in 70 percent of the world
\ntoday, while CDMA is doing well in only a limited number of
\nplaces, including South Korea, China, Latin America and parts of
\nthe U.S.<\/p>\n
The story about CDMA becomes more interesting when we look
\ninto the future, where cell phone users will demand applications
\nsuch as data communication, continuous access to the Internet,
\nposition location and streaming audio and video. All of these
\napplications will require a lot of bandwidth, which can only be
\nprovided by the Third Generation, or 3G. During the interview,
\nMr. Jacobs showed me and a colleague from Business Indonesia his
\ntiny, next-generation cell phone, which was already equipped with
\na video camera. Certainly it was not a GSM cell phone.<\/p>\n
The 3G of CDMA, developed by Qualcomm, is called CDMA2000 and
\nit will become available around the middle of this year in the
\nU.S. Interestingly, the GSM group has decided to adopt Wide-
\nbandwidth CDMA, or WCDMA, as the standard for their 3G services.<\/p>\n
WCDMA is not the same as CDMA2000, and the reason Qualcomm is
\nso upbeat is that, because it is available today, its 3G has a
\ntwo-year lead over WCDMA.<\/p>\n
\"CDMA2000 offers a performance that is as good as or better
\nthan WCDMA,\" explained Mr. Jacobs. \"CDMA2000 uses the existing
\nbandwidth and has a much easier upgrade path from CDMA. It is
\nalso available commercially today. In Korea, this 3G CDMA is
\nalready being used by five million subscribers.\"<\/p>\n
The beauty of CDMA2000, according to Mr. Jacobs, is that it
\nwill not take very long for the operators to make it available.
\nOn the other hand, GSM operators are still stuck with the 2.5G,
\ni.e., GPRS, which is the bridge between 2G GSM and 3G.<\/p>\n
So, Qualcomm is currently in discussions with a number of
\nlocal operators that have the 800 MHz frequency slot to see
\nwhether they are interested in offering its 3G CDMA to Indonesian
\nsubscribers.<\/p>\n
If things work out, we may have 3G services -- fast data
\ncommunication, continuous Internet connection, etc. -- by the end
\nof this year.<\/p>\n
The only problem faced by the operators will initially be the
\navailability of handsets, as the experience of China Unicom has
\nshown. China Unicom introduced CDMA services, but business was
\nvery slow because vendors -- including China's own handset makers
\nand Korean LG and Samsung -- were waiting to see the market
\nresponse to the new service. However, as the service is also
\nbeing rolled out this year and next year in other places in the
\nregion, including Australia and New Zealand, we may not have the
\nproblem that China Unicom had.<\/p>\n
Another attraction of the CDMA standard is the Binary Runtime
\nEnvironment for Wireless (BREW), which is a platform that enables
\napplications to run on all devices that use CDMA. This platform
\nallows developers to develop applications using a developer kit
\nthat they can download from Qualcomm's website. It is a layer
\nplatform stacked on top of the individual operating system of the
\ndevices, making them all work like tiny computers. This, of
\ncourse, will open up new opportunities for Indonesian developers
\nwho can create applications for the local market.<\/p>\n
Currently, we have chronic and difficult problems with our
\ntelecom infrastructure. Forget about the quality of our PSTN (Mr.
\nJacobs told us that he was able to get a speed of only 24 Kbps
\nwith his modem from his room at the Grand Hyatt), the six million
\nfixed phone lines for a population of 210 million is a crippling
\nsituation in the information era. Our cellular phone population
\nhas been growing much faster, and it may have already exceeded
\nthe number of fixed-line telephones in the country. Yet, our
\nprogress is paltry compared to what has been accomplished by
\nChina, where mobile phones are reportedly used by 140 million
\npeople today.<\/p>\n
So, whichever technology, whether GSM or CDMA-based, can
\nrapidly multiply the number of Indonesians that can be reached by
\nphone at any time should be more than welcomed.<\/p>\n
Compatibility should not pose a serious problem. In South
\nKorea, progress has been made to enable people with a GSM phone
\nto use their SIM card in a rented CDMA handset for roaming
\npurposes, so that they still can keep their phone number,
\nvoicemail and other services. This service, which used to be
\nimpossible, has been introduced in time for the influx of soccer
\nfans during the FIFA World Cup event there.<\/p>\n
Whether it is GSM or CDMA, we will grab it if we can have
\nfaster and more reliable connection speeds. And data
\ncommunication is one of CDMA's strong points. \"One of the
\npossibilities that we see in Indonesia is the use of a CDMA-based
\nfixed wireless network that connects all the Internet cafes,\" Mr.
\nJacobs commented. So, we do have a couple of things to look
\nforward to as a result of his visit here.<\/p>",
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