Linked by David Adams on Wed 25th Sep 2002 15:53 UTC
The information that I could find on the web about Sprint's new '3G' high-speed data service was a little short on solid information, so I spoke with Kevin Packingham, Senior Manager of Business Marketing for SprintPCS' new Vision service. I sought him out because Ubiquitous, affordable high speed wireless data services are something of a holy grail for tech-savvy road warriors like myself, so I received each morsel of information about Sprint's new service with great interest. Mr. Packingham spoke over the phone and he clarified many of the questions that I had about the new service.
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"However I believe with regard to mobile communications Japan clearly lead in technology "
nope just not true, and i am not being chauvinistic either.
I work with start ups in wireless technology so i get to see a lot of stuff early, and the break through technology is almost always coming from start ups, again most of which are in the state of california in the US. If anyone has a lead in tech (not implementation, the US lags there)it is the state of california, forget the US.
The technologies that will move wireless forward, as opposed to UMTS WCDMA which is a slight improvement, are things like
Beamforming (adaptive antenna arrays)
OFDM or W-OFDM(air interface)
MIMO (multiple in multiple out (more than one antenna)
Spatial processing (creates massive increases in capacity)
IP centric core and native support for TCP/IP
FAST ARQ
Multi-mode chip sets (802.11/cellular, wcdma/gsm/cdma2000)
more efficient antennas at the handset (check out e-tenna)
efficient wireless MACs (not easy to do)
Peer to peer ad hoc networking (mesh networking)
Most of that is coming from the US. The best engineers left ericsson, NEC, and nokia years ago to become rich at little start ups with great tech. The best wireless technolog is and has been with the US department of defense since the 50's. the US DoD is about 20 to 30 years ahead of the wireless industry, and its alumni often populate those little start ups. The dod, by way, has already given us spread spectrum (cdma), Ultrawideband, smart antennas, mesh networking, low-power/efficient power amplifers (GaAs), etc. the DoD had CDMA 40-50 years ago. Ericsson/nokia are still having problems with it today.
YOu don't hear about it because the little start ups don't have the hype machine of Europe inc, or Japan, inc. or even America, inc. By the way, those start ups are composed of europeans, americans, and asians. the Venture capital environment is what attracts them to the US. Europe, inc. and japan inc are just vying for supremacy in market share, not really technolgoy. don't listen to them. Have faith in the free market economy. Autocrats (yes those people behind W-CDMA)can neither control nor predict the fast moving tech economy. it has a mind of its own.