Tài liệu GSM and UMTS (P23) pdf

Chapter 23: GSM’s Success Factors Friedhelm Hillebrand 1 23.1 Acceptance in Europe, the First Step The first big step was the success and acceptance in all European countries. GSM was certainly the right product at the right time. There were countries like France and Germany who needed capacity in the early 1990s. Other countries like the UK, Italy, the Nordic countries had high capacity analogue systems. They were attracted by superior GSM features like small hand-held terminals as well as superior services like international roaming, SMS and data services. Also the high security, capacity and quality played an important role. In addition the newly licensed operators put forward demanding requirements. These demand- ing market requirements led to an advanced future proof system design and specification and evolution. The way all players in Europe worked together towards a common goal and the energy this created was essential. In this process a capability was developed to reach decisions even on the most controversial questions, which had not been anticipated. A key activity to build momentum was the co-ordinated infrastructure procurement by the operators in 1988 which lead to ten contracts which convinced manufacturers to take GSM seriously. 2 23.2 Globalisation by World-wide Opening For the globalisation again the principle ‘‘the right product at the right time’’ was the key. In the early 1990s GSM existed in many networks. Advanced terminals and infrastructure were available. International roaming was in operation. This worked together due to the compre- hensive GSM system standard. There was no real competition in digital systems by other standards. Therefore the advantages over existing analogue systems became the key for the countries outside Europe. And GSM was future-proof. The globalisation of GSM was driven by the fact that the major manufacturers understood the opportunity to play a leading world market role in mobile communication promoting GSM. This was spearheaded by Ericsson and Nokia, but all other major manufacturers like 1 The views expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of his affiliation entity. 2 For terminals no co-ordinated procurement had taken place. There was a lack of terminals at service opening. 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) Alcatel, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel and Siemens were active as well. Amongst the operators Vodafone exploited this potential best. But also France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, BT, Sonera and Telenor participated. The promotion was supported by actions of the GSM Association and associations of manufacturers. The open welcome and participation offered to the non-European operators was a key element. The globalisation of the European GSM MoU Group to the world-wide open GSM Association and the transformation of the European standardisation groups in CEPT via ETSI to the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) were other key reasons for the global acceptance of GSM. The very fast evolution of GSM even towards third generation (UMTS) made GSM/UMTS the most future proof solution world-wide leading to a market share of 69%. 23.3 GSM’s Superior Services and Systems Features, the Basis of the Success The ‘‘ right product’’ encompasses in the rapidly evolving markets a very advanced services and systems concept. GSM offers the most comprehensive range of services: telephony, short message, data and a very comprehensive range of supplementary services. Above this a superior set of toolkits for service creation was defined. GSM is the only system allowing a global roaming to all continents. GSM offers an unmatched voice quality due to the basic high quality radio transmission and a range of voice codecs, even with an adaptive system solution offering the optimum combination of capacity and quality in each cell. GSM systems offer a very high capacity by employing a very high frequency efficiency by using an advanced TDMA technology with adaptive power control, strong channel coding and equalisation, slow frequency hopping and discontinuous transmission, microcells under the umbrella of macrocells. GSM is very robust due to the mobile assisted handover. GSM is optimised for hand-helds. Digital technology allows the use of very largescale integration. The technology is less complex than some competitors. A sleep mode allows battery saving. Slow frequency hopping ensures a high quality for slowly moving hand-helds. GSM’s superior security and anti-fraud measures protect the users privacy and the oper- ator’s revenue. GSM is an open standard, that is not dominated by the IPR of a single manufacturer. GSM provides the only complete system standard defining services, system architecture and selected interfaces: SIM/ME, terminal/base station, two intra-network inter- faces and an inter-network interface enabling international roaming. GSM terminals, infra- structure and test systems have the highest market volume and the widest number of manufacturers leading to the widest choice and lowest cost. GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication548 . slowly moving hand-helds. GSM s superior security and anti-fraud measures protect the users privacy and the oper- ator’s revenue. GSM is an open standard, that. reasons for the global acceptance of GSM. The very fast evolution of GSM even towards third generation (UMTS) made GSM/ UMTS the most future proof solution