Ericsson brings 3G closer to home

Ericsson brings 3G closer to home

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

A couple of years ago, hearing the name Ericsson would give us
the image of sturdy GSM cell phone handsets that competed with
big names such as Nokia and Motorola.

When its competitors pulled ahead with more attractive cell
phone models and left it in the dust, this Swedish company did
the right thing. It joined hands with a Japanese company renowned
for its design prowess. Sony Ericsson, which was established as a
fifty-fifty joint venture in 2001, is one of the strong
contenders in the cellular handsets market today.

Sony brought in its indisputable ability to create cool
gadgets, while Ericsson supplied its mobile communication
expertise.

However, like most other big players in the field, such as
Alcatel, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung, Ericsson is not just a cell
phone maker, it also one of the providers of the building blocks
for the telecom infrastructure.

Because we the consumers do not use or see the products, we
may not be aware of what it does, but this company is confident
enough to claim "some 40 percent of all mobile calls are made
through Ericsson systems."

By the way, the history of Ericsson is also interesting. The
company was founded back in 1876 as a repair shop for telegraph
equipment used by the Swedish telegraph company.

Its founder was Lars Magnus Ericsson, who reportedly retired
and took up farming in 1901. But, almost a decade later, he and
his wife Hilda invented what was perhaps the first mobile
telephone.

They used it as a car phone as they traveled across Sweden.

The technology was not based on wireless digital, of course.
It was more akin to how people here steal electricity from the
state-owned electricity company PLN-direct cable-to-cable
pairing.

When GSM was basically the name of the game in the cell phone
industry, Ericsson was one of those who supplied the GSM
operators with the building blocks for their infrastructure. That
was not a surprise, as the GSM standard came from Western Europe
and was the source of European pride and joy -- and Ericsson was
a European company.

However, when Qualcomm decided to sell off its infrastructure
business, Ericsson bought it in March 1999. This, interestingly,
ended the long-running hostility between the two companies.

Understandably, by adding Qualcomm's CDMA infrastructure
expertise to its existing GSM technology know-how, Ericsson
acquired a competitive advantage that no one else has in the
industry: It has a mastery of both technologies, and its products
have become available on both sides.

On the GSM front, this company has products for GPRS, EDGE,
and WCDMA -- which is the 3G path for the GSM people. On the CDMA
side, Ericsson provides CDMA 2000 1X, CDMA 2000 EV-DO (optimized
for data) and now CDMA 2000 EV-DV.

"In fact, we now use a common platform for both systems,"
explained Peter Lancia -- Ericsson's director of product and
system marketing, CDMA systems -- to a group of Indonesian IT
journalists, including myself, during a session in the 3G World
Congress in Bangkok earlier this month.

"We can save a lot with the economies of scale because we use
the same component parts in our infrastructure offerings for
either GSM or CDMA."

Normally, the 3G World Congress takes place in Hong Kong. Last
year, I was lucky to be invited by Qualcomm to the event. This
year, because of the SARS breakout, the event had been moved to
Bangkok.

Do you remember Metcalfe's Law? Robert Metcalfe, the founder
of 3Com, who also invented the Ethernet that allows computers to
be interconnected in a network, said that the value -- or
usefulness -- of a network would increase exponentially as the
number of its nodes increased.

Keeping his law in mind, I have been questioning myself of the
real value of the SMS or MMS services if the number of mobile
phones I can send them to does not increase because of the
interoperability problem.

What if, for example, I want to send a short video clip with
voice annotation from my GSM cell phone to someone who has a CDMA
cell phone? It that cannot work, the use of the cell phones will
be limited although the number of cell phone users may double or
triple.

Suppose we have new services in the future such as video-
conferencing, can we participate in the session using a mix of
WCDMA and CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO cell phones? Ideally, we should be
able to. But, in reality, that may be a big challenge. Here is
where Ericsson seems to also have the upper hand. With one foot
in each standard, the company should be able to provide the ideal
bridge. "If the operator uses our SMS or MMS gateways, there will
no problem," said Peter.

Here Telkom is one of Ericsson's major customers. As we all
know, Telkom is using Ericsson's CDMA 2000 1X infrastructure for
its TelkomFlexi. With Ericsson hardware and software, there
should be no problem sending an SMS or MMS from a TelkomFlexi
handset to any GSM cell phone. At least, that is what we expect.

What is the road map of the mobile communication and mobile
data? Right now, CDMA seems to have the head start. According to
Peter Lancia, we are now looking at CDMA 2000 EV-DV for the
ultimate in mobile data for a couple of years into the future.

He also predicted that it will arrive commercially in the 2005
timeframe, giving us integrated voice and data connection and
real time data services. With the integrated voice and data
communication, for example, two people can exchange video clips
and talk to each other using one single channel.

Ericsson has demonstrated the CDMA 2000 EV-DV over its
commercial CDMA 2000 1X network in its San Diego lab. During the
recent 3G World Congress, it showcased a simulation of the
infrastructure, as moving the entire lab to Bangkok for the event
was simply out of the question. "Nonetheless, it shows that the
CDMA 2000 EV-DV already works," said Peter.

The questions remain the same: What can we use these amazing
capabilities for? How can we capitalize on them to create real
benefits that will improve our quality of life? We only have two
more years to think hard and invent. Invent, just like Lars and
Hilda Ericsson invented their first car phone.