A celebratory showdown: GSM meeting highlights milestones and defensive stance

As long as the North American wireless market remains a multitechnology place, none of the contenders is likely to ever let its guard completely down.

That is especially true of the GSM community, which gathered last week in San Francisco for the IBC-sponsored GSM in North America conference. Despite its obvious success worldwide, GSM still is considered by some to be a "foreign" technology in North America, and as such the community's third annual U.S. event felt somewhat like bitter victory celebration.

The GSM community-and, to be fair, other technology communities as well-still clearly viewthe competition to be other technologies and the subscriber numbers they can churn out rather than the quality and sophistication of service they can achieve. GSM Memorandum of Understanding Association chair Adriana Nugter described "fierce competition" that GSM faces in North America and the Asia Pacific region while maintaining confidence that GSM will achieve 50% of the world's market share by 2000, "no matter what the others say they can achieve."

Like other technology-focused conferences, last week's GSM meeting offered more self-congratulation than examination of the hard issues. For the MOU Association, it was an opportunity to celebrate the technology's 1 million-customer milestone. To mark the event, the association and several operators and vendors donated GSM phones and airtime to Sacred Heart Community Service, a San Jose public service agency.

But even the "Thanks a Million" announcement was delivered with a defensive tone and a not so subtle dig at GSM's technology rivals.

"Unlike some in the industry, we're not talking about estimated customers, projected customers or analog-to-digital converts," said Don Warkentin, president and chief executive officer of Aerial Communications and head of the GSM Alliance, a band of seven North American GSM operators. "We're talking about new customers."

GSM systems are now in place in 110 countries, a mark that Nugter wryly noted puts GSM in "more countries than McDonald's." At last count in September, the technology boasted 600 cities, 7000 cell sites and 60 million customers worldwide, according to the association.

Certainly GSM technology has made a name for itself quickly in the U.S. and Canada after a long reign in Europe and Asia, but many questions remain that cannot be answered by subscriber numbers alone.

Among them is the pending bankruptcy of Pocket Communications, GSM's C block ringer. Without Pocket providing the GSM glue to adhere the A and B block license holders' markets together, the technology still operates on islands and can not truly be considered to have a national presence.

One way to keep GSM from being stranded on islands is to facilitate roaming with analog networks, a strategy that some carriers are now pursuing. And one financial analyst at last week's conference said the situation Pocket and other C block hopefuls are in could be alleviated by a more hospitable financial community.

"The investment climate for wireless stocks in general-and in particular for the GSM community-is improving dramatically," said Barry Sine, senior telecommunications analyst for SBC Warburg Dillon Read. "The market is warming up to this industry, and in large part it's due to the success we've seen to date."

AT&T ENTERS NORTHEAST OHIO AT&T Wireless Services has expanded its growing national networks by launching its Digital PCS offering in the Cleveland/Akron/Canton market. Lucent Technologies provided the infrastructure for the TDMA network.

NORTEL OFFERS FIXED DATA Northern Telecom has adapted its Proximity fixed wireless access system to provide 56 kb/s modem service for Internet access and other fixed wireless data applications. The Proximity system uses digital radio for last-mile connection to public networks.