Chapter 6: GSM Goes to North
America
Don Zelmer
1
6.1 US Regulatory Status in the 1990s
During the first part of the 1990s, the regulatory climate in the US cellular environment was
fashioned by the components of the time. The migration from analogue to digital was under-
way. The TDMA/FDMA debate had finished and a decision had been made (with TDMA
winning) and the TDMA/CDMA public relations wars were in full swing. CDMA was
thought by some to be the saviour of the world, capacity wise, and others were firmly
committed to TDMA and some even to enhancements of TDMA.
A new US President took office in 1993 and one of the concepts that was brought forward,
by his administration, was the idea of auctioning spectrum to the highest bidder within certain
bounds. The concept was further elaborated in that a portion of spectrum, in the 1900 MHz
band, that had historically been used for point to point microwave, and had recently been
designated as Future Public Land Mobile Telecommunications System (FPLMTS) spectrum
by the ITU, would be auctioned by the US government. The idea was to relieve increasing
capacity problems in the 850 MHz wireless band and to increase revenue to help to balance
the US budget.
With so many different options apparently available, the US Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), under the leadership of Reed Hundt, came up with some novel concepts
for licensing a portion of the FPLMTS band, which eventually became known as Personal
Communication Services (PCS). A plan was put into place that would grant companies, that
proposed new and innovative technological concepts, commercial licenses to try, build, and
perfect their concepts, which were called ‘‘Pioneer Preference Licenses’’. The licenses were
to be sold at a discount compared to the auctioned commercial licenses. In January 1994,
three of the 50 candidates were successful and received licenses at a discounted cost based on
a ‘‘technology beauty contest’’: Omnipoint, American Personal Communications and Cox
Enterprises.
1
Editor: Don Zelmer, Cingular Wireless (don.zelmer@cingular.com); Contributors: Chris Wallace, Nokia (chris
wallace@nokia.com), Ed Ehrlich, Nokia (ed.ehrlich@nokia.com), Gary Jones, VoiceStream (gary.jones@voices-
tream.com), Mark Younge, VoiceStream (mark.younge@voicestream.com), Quent Cassen, Conexant
(quent.cassen@conexant.com), Alain Ohana, Cingular Wireless (alain.ohana@cingular.com), Mel Woinsky, Tele-
com Standards Consulting (mel@woinsky.com), Asok Chatterjee, Ericsson (asok.chatterjee@ericsson.com), The
views expressed in this module are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of his affiliation entity.
GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication
Edited by Friedhelm Hillebrand
Copyright q 2001 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
ISBNs: 0-470-84322-5 (Hardback); 0-470-845546 (Electronic)
During this time, the FCC continued its historical approach to licensing by letting the
market place decide what technology to implement into any particular licensed band. This
helped to open the floodgates for multiple technologies ultimately being implemented in the
wireless marketplace in the US by not creating a selection criteria for the standards process.
As part of the vision supplied by the FCC that shared many FPLMTS concepts, PCS was to
enable wireless communications for the masses. At the time, cellular was primarily a business
tool, still quite expensive and cumbersome to use. PCS was to allow robust and ubiquitous
service to small, inexpensive portable devises with wireline voice quality supporting many
advanced features. The FCC wanted to use this commercial potential of PCS to stimulate
technical creativity to surpass the current analogue and digital technologies. Unfortunately,
there were also aggressive PCS auction dates associated with this activity. These dates
eventually compromised the technical revolution aspects of PCS.
In September 1993, the FCC released their Report & Order, formally authorising PCS in
the 2 GHz ‘‘ emerging technologies’’ band. The Commission allocated 120 MHz for licensed
PCS services and 20 MHz for unlicensed PCS devices in the 1850–1990 MHz band.
One aspect of the auction process, which was to have significant consequences for GSM,
was the requirement that the technology choice for a prospective bidder had to be declared
prior to the beginning of the auction process. As the various potential bidders were building
their business cases, there was initially great reluctance to declare a technology choice. As
GSM represented the greatest viable commercial threat to the incumbent digital technologies,
it was important to have a commercial entity supporting the GSM technology through the
standards process. The first company to declare its technology choice was MCI, Inc. This
November 1993 decision by MCI proved to be crucial in helping GSM survive the early days
of the standards process as it withstood assaults on all fronts from US incumbents.
The first broadband PCS auctions for the PCS A and B bands began in December 1994.
And by March 1995, bids for this 60 MHz of spectrum totalled $7.7 billion.
6.2 Wireless Standards in the US
Standardisation in the US is generally limited to an industry agreement to a particular
architecture and related interfaces to which conformance is voluntary. ANSI
2
accreditation
of an organisation means that the standards developed by that organisation adhere to ANSI
approved guidelines and procedures for standards development.
However, there was a perception in the American market place that if a technology was
standardised, it would meet end user expectations. Further, that it would interoperate seam-
lessly with another product that also meets the same standard. Neither of these perceptions
was necessarily true. American standards are usually written to allow for significant flex-
ibility in implementation and proprietary feature development.
In the US, standards development for wireline products and services has traditionally been
done in Committee T1,
3
an ANSI accredited standards body sponsored by the Alliance for
Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS). Committee T1 was formed shortly after the
GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication106
2
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private, non-profit organization that administers and
coordinates the US voluntary standardization and conformity assessment system. ANSI has served in its capacity as
administrator and coordinator of the US private sector voluntary standardization system for more than 80 years.
3
Accredited by ANSI, Committee T1 develops standards and other deliverables that facilitate the deployment of
interoperable telecommunications systems and services in North America and throughout the world.
divestiture of AT&T in 1984 in order to allow broad industry participation in the development
of standards and to plan the development of standards going forward to meet industry needs.
Traditional cellular standards were being developed in the Telecommunications Industry
Association, a manufacturers trade association. This group was responsible for all cellular
and mobile radio standards development in North America.
6.3 The Formation of the Joint Technical Committee (JTC)
The development of standards to support the PCS market was significantly appealing to both
US standards bodies and each was able to argue the right to claim them as their own. The
architecture and network interfaces required to support full service PCS was thought to
probably more closely emulate those of the wireline network. However, wireless air inter-
faces and mobility management issues were clearly the domain of the cellular group. Rather
than perform redundant work in each organisation along with creating unnecessarily devia-
tions, both groups agreed to a T1 proposal to work together in the development of air
interfaces for PCS. The resulting entity, the Joint Technical Committee on Wireless Access
(JTC), was formed between TIA
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TR45 and Technical Subcommittee (TSC) T1E1 under
Committee T1. The JTC was later moved to TSC T1P1 and TR46 as PCS continued to evolve
in TIA and Committee T1.
Initially, the objective of the JTC was to develop a unified Common Air Interface (CAI) for
the provision of PCS. While this was an admirable goal, it may have been a little naive based
on the potential size of the PCS market and the number of different commercial interests
involved. In addition, the industry was polarised between those who had significant cellular
interests and those that were new entrants. Also, the available time was compressed by the
auction schedule.
In November 1993, 16 proposals for air interfaces were submitted to the JTC. Within 6
weeks, the JTC successfully consolidated the number of air interface proposals to eight (the
total number was later reduced to seven). The final air interface candidates included:
† Composite CDMA/TDMA which was the technology proposed by Omnipoint
† CDMA (Upbanded IS-95) which was proposed by Qualcomm and Lucent
† Personal Access Communications System (PACS), a combination of PHPS and WACS
which was proposed by Bellcore and Hughes
† North American TDMA (Upbanded IS-54) proposed by Ericsson
† PCS 1900 (Modified DCS 1800 or Upbanded GSM) proposed by Ericsson, Nokia, Nortel,
and Siemens
† DECT based proposed by Ericsson
† Wide Band CDMA proposed by Oki
Seven air interfaces was still a long way from the original goal of a single CAI solution
expected from the JTC by the industry. Many of the proposed technologies were thought to be
more appropriate for low tier (low mobility) operation than for high tier operation. This
combined with the aforementioned cellular/non-cellular view of the PCS market formed a
market view in which no single technology appeared to be able to serve. In addition, each
Chapter 6: GSM Goes to North America 107
4
Also accredited by ANSI, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) is a US based communications
and information technology trade association industry that plays an important role in the development of commu-
nications standards.
technology was at a different level of maturity with respect to commercial viability at 2 GHz
and no proponent was interested in withdrawing their proposal in the interest of unifying the
industry around a common solution.
The multiplicity and the inability to reduce the number of air interfaces was an issue which
plagued the JTC throughout its existence. This was especially irritating to several commercial
interests who had hoped that PCS would follow an air interface evolution similar to cellular.
The JTC repeatedly attempted to seek guidance from Committee T1 and TIA on further
minimising the number of air interfaces but neither committee was able to provide criteria for
further reducing the number of proposed standard air interfaces. In addition, multiple tech-
nical standards were consistent with the FCC policy of letting a competitive market place
determine the winners.
In an effort to gain characterisation information and to possibly reduce the number of
proposed technologies for standardisation, the JTC considered requiring RF propagation
simulations and the subsequent testing at a common environment be completed by each
technology proposed for standardisation. This was opposed by manufacturers of cellular
based technologies who felt that it was a waste of resources because their technologies had
been previously proven in other trials and deployments. Further, they argued that the JTC did
not have the authority to require the simulations and testing as a condition for standardisation.
However, there was significant support for the simulations and testing especially from the
operator community who wanted as much information about each technology as possible in
order to help with deployment decisions. US West volunteered their Boulder (Colorado)
Industry Test Bed (BITB) for the field-testing. Subsequently, the JTC decided to require
each technology to perform simulations and to commit to testing at BITB as a condition to go
to letter ballot unless it presented an ‘‘ onerous burden’’ on that technology.
Despite the discord, individual air interface work progressed rapidly as some technologies
were already standardised at 900 MHz and only needed to be modified to operate at PCS
frequencies. This was especially true for PCS 1900 that had a close cousin; DCS 1800 already
deployed in the 2 GHz region.
6.4 Americanisation of GSM
The ETSI GSM standard is a complete architectural specification for a wireless mobile
telecommunications network. All that was required to satisfy the JTC requirements was an
air interface specification that was a subset of the complete GSM works. As a result, PCS
1900 set the pace for standards development in the JTC based largely on Phase 2 specifica-
tions. PCS 1900 was the first technology to complete its simulation work and to be tested at
BITB. However, it was difficult to describe the air interface without hincluding some addi-
tional supporting information. Some of that information included certain regulatory require-
ments, removal of references which were relevant only to Europe and the addition of
references that were relevant to the US market. One area of considerable concern by the
US editors was the use of a UK dictionary for spell check purposes. It was agreed that a US
dictionary would be used to facilitate the translation process.
5
As a result, the complete ANSI
standard for the PCS1900 radio interface, J-STD-007, is approximately 2400 pages. By
March 1995, PCS 1900 had received approval for publication as an ANSI standard. And
GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication108
5
This chapter, written by Americans, was translated into the King’s English by the editor of this book.
in November 1995, Vice President Al Gore inaugurated the nation’s first PCS system – the
PCS1900 network from American Personal Communications (APC) – with a phone call from
the White House.
Work to develop American versions of the GSM MAP and SS7 A interface was initiated in
TR46 as it was outside of the scope of the JTC. In addition, Stage 1 service description and A-
interface projects were initiated as well as an Interworking & Interoperability (I&I) project
between GSMand IS 41 MAPs in TR46. These three standards were sent out for letter ballot
approval in late 1994.
6.5 The Conclusion of the JTC
The simulation and testing decision turned out to be the beginning of the end for the JTC. The
opponents of the simulation and testing program escalated their objections within the TIA.
This coupled with baseless accusations of TIA procedural violations within the JTC formed
the basis for the TIA decision to stop its participation in the JTC.
As a result of this decision, it was necessary to find an appropriate standards fora from
which the maintenance and evolution could be continued. The TIA had assumed that all the
air interface standards proponents would elect to perform the document maintenance and
future work in TIA. However, this was not necessarily the case for many of air interface
groups especially among potential operators. The PCS 1900 group was one of those air
interfaces that did not support a move to TIA.
The Committee T1 reaction to the TIA resolution was to pass a resolution of their own in
support of the JTC. Several discussions between the TIA and the Committee T1 yielded little
progress and the matter was escalated within the TIA to the Technical Standards Sub
Committee (TSSC) and a special meeting was called to hear arguments.
The special meeting of the TSSC heard the arguments from the interested parties and then
deliberated privately. The result was a recommendation that after completing its work a TAG
would transition to a Joint Project Committee (JPC) managed between Committee T1 and
TIA. The JPC was a new concept developed by the TSSC for future joint work. Unlike the
JTC these JPCs would be unique entities supporting a single project. Further, a JPC would be
led by either TIA or Committee T1 which was not the case with the JTC. The TSSC proposed
that the upbanded cellular technologies (e.g. NA TDMA, CDMA) and Wideband CDMA and
DECT based technologies form JPCs under TIA. Conversely, PCS 1900, Composite CDMA/
TDMA, and PACS would be under Committee T1.
The Committee T1 response to the TSSC proposal was generally positive. The T1 Advi-
sory (T1AG) group held several conference calls to discuss the TSSC proposal and a response
suggesting some minor modifications to the plan was sent to the TSSC. Meanwhile, the
cellular based technologies grew impatient and initiated a move back to TR45 where their
technologies were initially developed. The DECT based technology had long been doing its
work in TR41, a CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) development group. Based upon
participant preference, this left PCS 1900 and Composite CDMA/TDMA (both use GSM
network architectures), Wideband CDMA and PACS in a T1P1 led JPC.
The movement of the cellular technologies from TR46 to TR45 prompted the TIA to host
a joint meeting between the groups to eliminate duplication of effort. The resulting deci-
sions left the PCS 1900 services and network and air interface work along with the
Composite CDMA/TDMA, PACS and Wideband CDMA air interface work alone in TR
Chapter 6: GSM Goes to North America 109
46 jointly with TSC T1P1 as the lead group. TSC T1P1 assumed a leadership role in the
development of these standards with TR46 concentrating on issues of common interest
between CDMA/TDMA based andGSM systems such as PCS interference and intersystem
interworking.
The PCS 1900 standards were successfully developed in an environment where some
parties did everything possible to delay or block the development of PCS 1900 standards.
6.6 The North American PCS 1900 Action Group (NPAG)
About half way through the standards development cycle market pressures necessitated the
development of more features for PCS 1900 for the North American market. Many of these
features could not be developed in the standards bodies in time for service rollout. This and
the need for PCS 1900 proponents to be able to work out common issues led to the formation
of the North American PCS 1900 Action Group (NPAG) which was a logical step in the
evolution of PCS 1900 as a North American technology.
The NPAG membership was composed of operators who were actively promoting PCS
1900 for deployment in North America. The intent was to identify and resolve issues that
affected the deployment of PCS 1900 in North America. The NPAG formed Technical
Advisory Groups (TAGs) composed of experts from the manufacturers and operator commu-
nities. The TAGs worked under well-defined scope and charter and reported results to the
plenary.
The NPAG initiated TAGs to address Vocoder, Data, Services, Handset, Billing, Stan-
dards, EMC, and Roaming issues as well as ad-hoc groups to investigate E911, Lawful
Intercept, and Network Management. The vocoder TAG was the steward of the US-1
EFR, which became commercially available in 3Q96.
The turmoil in the standards fora had concerned NPAG for quite some time. In addition,
GSM related issues that required intervention were continually surfacing. The standards TAG
was initiated to monitor these for the PCS 1900 community. The TAG became very active in
the JTC issue by authoring several contributions to TIA and Committee T1 that presented the
view of the PCS1900 community. In addition, the group successfully co-ordinated the alloca-
tion of an E.164 global title translation from T1S1 after two previous attempts had failed.
6.7 The Enhanced Full Rate Vocoder (EFR)
North American PCS operators had generally recognised that wireline quality speech would
be a critical element in the success of PCS in their markets. The NPAG believed that is was
feasible to develop this capability in PCS 1900 systems in time for the North American PCS
rollout. Traditional environments and processes for vocoder development had yielded satis-
factory results in the past. It was recognised that the development process for a new vocoder
would have to be expedited significantly in order to meet the aggressive time to market
requirements. NPAG felt that a market driven, task oriented forum was required for the
vocoder development in order to increase the probability of success.
NPAG initiated a TAG to work with equipment manufacturers and develop an improved
quality speech vocoder that would be commercially available in time for service rollout. The
participation in the TAG consisted of those companies who had committed to market GSM
GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication110
based PCS 1900 systems in North America. There were five proposals presented in the first
TAG meeting.
NPAG shared the proposed development schedule for the vocoder with the manufacturers.
There was significant concern about being able to meet the schedule without compromising
the quality of the vocoder. Further, it became evident that there were critical areas in the
development process that, if not managed aggressively, would delay the availability of the
vocoder. Eventually the process was slowed significantly while trying to reach consensus on
the evaluation criteria for vocoder selection.
The resulting delay postponed the vocoder selection and jeopardised the commercial
availability of the vocoder. In order to break the deadlock, the operators authored a joint
letter to each of the manufacturers reiterating the need for the earliest possible commercial
availability of the new vocoder. The letter directed the manufacturers to collectively decide
which of them had the best solution.
The manufacturers met and individually evaluated each others design in their laboratories.
At the completion of their tests and they collectively selected the Nokia Sherbrook design for
the EFR vocoder, whose specification had been completed in August 1995. The EFR was
later tested at an independent laboratory. The results indicated that the EFR had achieved the
desired quality improvement within the complexity objectives. The EFR was then proposed
to the JTC for standardisation. The standard was forwarded on for letter ballot and was
approved as the ‘‘US-1’’ EFR.
The EFR was also proposed to the ETSI SMG for standardisation. However, the Speech
Experts Group (SEG) had been working on several proposals and were considering conduct-
ing an extensive testing program to select an EFR vocoder. Proponents of adopting the US-1
EFR pointed out that it had been thoroughly tested and was in the final balloting stages in TSC
T1P1 in the US and could quickly be adopted and deployed. The GSM MoU Association sent
a liaison to ETSI requesting that the US-1 be adopted as the EFR as well. In October 1995 at
ETSI SMG plenary in Vienna the US-1 EFR was accepted as the ETSI SMG EFR. The
selection of US-1 was a significant milestone as it represented the first time that ETSI SMG
had accepted technical work from another standards development organisation. This agree-
ment set the stage for closer co-operation between TSC T1P1 and ETSI SMG.
6.8 AMR Codec
In late 1995 some of the NPAG companies were having problems with their business cases
for future expansion. The issue was that with the explosion of users of wireless, it was
apparent that system capacity would be a problem in the near future. Studies in the US
had shown that an additional 160 MHz of new spectrum would be required to satisfy the
demand for wireless services but at that point in time, no spectrum relief from the regulatory
bodies was on the horizon. Additionally, as a result of the PCS license auction process, some
GSM operators ended up with only 10 MHz of spectrum (5 MHz uplink and 5 MHz down-
link). One of the solutions to compensate for the small amount of spectrum available was to
introduce a half-rate speech codec. However, the competitive picture in North America and
the necessity to offer a high speech quality was making the existing GSM half-rate speech
codec (VSELP at 5.6 kbit/s) simply unacceptable. Consequently, the US marketplace
requested that an Enhanced Half Rate (EHR) speech codec be standardised as soon as
possible and immediately after the approval of the EFR standard.
Chapter 6: GSM Goes to North America 111
In response to that request and others coming from Europe, SMG set up a Speech Quality
Strategy Group (SQSG) to evaluate and refine the future strategy for the development of new
speech codecs (ex: narrowband or wideband) and new advanced speech related features
(Tandem Free Operation (TFO)). The SQSG released its report in mid-1996 and recom-
mended to start a feasibility study on a new multi-rate and adaptive
6
speech codec, later
called Adaptive Multi-Rate Speech Codec or AMR. The key objective of AMR was to
provide at the same time a high quality half-rate mode in good to very good propagation
conditions and a very robust full-rate mode so that the same high quality could be offered
down to the cell edge. Both modes had the potential to significantly increase the GSM
capacity without an impact on the offered quality.
When the feasibility study was completed in late 1997, the final approval of the AMR as a
new work item was still not considered as critical in Europe because most operators there
were barely starting to implement EFR and were not ready to support a new speech codec and
its possible impact on the installed base. At the same time, SMG was defining the basis for the
selection of the UMTS standard and it was clear that a speech codec with the same flexibility
as that offered by AMR would also be required for UMTS. It was then natural to consider
AMR as a strong candidate for the future GSM speech codec as well as UMTS. The work
item was approved under this assumption.
Because it was a major driver behind the new speech codec, the GSM Alliance
7
was
particularly interested and consequently highly involved in the development of AMR.
The development of AMR was completed as part of the GSM Release 98. The codec
specifications were approved in February 1999. The development was very successful, all
requirements being met by the selected candidate. In half-rate mode, AMR provides a very
high quality down to 13–16 dB C/I. In full-rate mode, AMR will provide the same high
quality level down to 4 dB C/I.
In the following months, on the basis of comparative tests performed in Europe and Japan,
the codec group of 3GPP recommended that AMR be also selected as the default speech
codec for the new UMTS standard. This recommendation was approved by TSG-SA in early
1999.
AMR is now the centre piece for the development of the speech service in all future
evolutions of the GSMandUMTS standard. This includes voiceover 8-PSK EDGE in
GSM or voiceover IP for both GSMand UMTS.
6.9 The GSM Alliance
With the PCS auctions complete, the executives of companies that had committed to deploy
PCS1900 turned their attention to the task of knitting together a North American GSM
network that could effectively compete against the nation-wide TDMA and CDMA carriers.
GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication112
6
The concept of an adaptive speech codec is one that changes voice coding (or source coding) rates depending on
some external constraint like the RF environment or the required capacity. For example, in a poor RF environment
more bits are directed to the protection of the encoded voice channel, while in a good RF environment fewer bits are
directed to RF protection and the highest possible speech quality can be provided to the subscriber. Similarly, by
reducing the coding rate, it is also possible to use less of the available radio bandwidth (half-rate channels in GSM or
higher spreading factor in W-CDMA) and increase the system capacity accordingly.
7
The GSM Alliance consisted of seven major companies from North America which were: Aerial, Omnipoint,
BellSouth PCS, Microcell 1-2-1, Pacific Bell Wireless, Powertel, and Western Wireless. Note: Aerial, Omnipoint,
Powertel, and the PCS portion of Western Wireless have all been absorbed by Voicestream Wireless.
The NPAG had been very successful in advancing the technical capabilities of GSM;
however, it lacked the administrative horsepower required to make the business decisions
and commitments required to forge a GSM footprint over North America. The GSM Alliance
LLP was formed so that the companies that declared to deploy PCS1900 could form a
business partnership to facilitate roaming and other interconnectivity agreements. In addition,
the Alliance served as GSM public relations by promoting the technology and recruiting
prospective GSM operators.
At about the same time the GSM operators took the opportunity to formalise the NPAG
structure by establishing it as a regional interest group under the GSM Association (at that
time the GSM MoU Association). The NPAG TAGs were reorganised into Sub Working
Groups similar to the structure of the GSM Association. The re-organised entity was called
GSM North America.
6.10 US Committee T1 and ETSI SMG Co-operation
Official representatives from the US operator community began attending ETSI SMG at
SMG#9. These early meetings were attended on an observer basis by kind permission of
the Chair of ETSI SMG. As the standardisation process continued in the US, it became
apparent to the US representatives that a more formal arrangement was needed between
TSC T1P1 and ETSI SMG. This arrangement was negotiated over a number of SMG plenary
meetings and eventually resulted in a working procedures agreement. These procedures
became the basis of an excellent and practical working partnership between these two tech-
nical groups.
In an effort to contribute to the GSM specification development, TSC T1P1 proposed and
agreed within the SMG community, to develop standards for areas of US need such as 14.4
kbs per time slot, terminal location, calling name identification, and emergency services
which were to be standardised in the US and submitted to SMG for inclusion into the
ETSI GSM standardisation process. These services would be accepted by SMG and SMG
would have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the TSC T1P1 developed services
would be properly incorporated into the base GSM specifications. One of the most important
additions to the base GSM specifications was the inclusion of the 1900 MHz radio specific
aspects. This addition formally integrated the US PCS1900 system as part of the GSM family.
Calling name identification, 14.4 kbs per time slot, and EFR were completed in North
America and submitted and accepted by SMG. Location and emergency services were
worked and eventually transferred to 3GPP where they are being standardised as this is
being written (mid-2001). Some issues, such as location, are not trivial and have required
a significant amount of development with some ‘‘ false starts’’. Completion of the standardi-
sation of location services will probably be completed by the end of 2001.
6.11 A Change to the US Process
As a result of the standards efforts by TSC T1P1, it also became apparent that the differing
processes between the two standards bodies were making maintenance of the US standards an
impractical burden. The speed and scope of change at each SMG plenary made the US
maintenance process impractical. Another method was needed to maintain the relevancy of
Chapter 6: GSM Goes to North America 113
the US documents and keep within the guidelines of the ANSI process. After much discus-
sion, the concept of using ETSI SMG documents as normative reference in the US standards
documents was finally agreed. This allowed the maintenance and evolution to continue
unimpeded without unnecessary duplication of resources and effort. In fact, this concept
would form the basis of the SDO relationship to the 3GPP.
6.12 Closing
The success of the co-operation between ETSI SMG and TSC T1P1 was a brilliant counter-
example to the sometimes intense inter-regional standards competition that has marred many
international standards efforts. In fact, the experience gained, during the GSM standards
process, provided the basis for key elements of the co-operational working methods for
3GPP.
GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication114
. future
evolutions of the GSM and UMTS standard. This includes voiceover 8-PSK EDGE in
GSM or voiceover IP for both GSM and UMTS.
6.9 The GSM Alliance
With the. 1995, PCS 1900 had received approval for publication as an ANSI standard. And
GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication108
5
This chapter,