A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Orlando

For several years now, various second generation (2G) digital standards have played out their plots and story lines, shaping headlines in the trade media. Which is better? TDMA? CDMA? GSM? Why did this carrier make the choices it did? How is that selection working out? It grew both tedious and monotonous to cover, as I imagine it was to read. Initially, it appeared that third generation (3G) likewise might be mired in the same repetitive debates: This technology choice provides a better migration path than that one.

However, a funny thing happened in Orlando, site of PCS '98. The polemic that previously focused on incompatible standards comparisons and litigious threats now seems to have progressed into ... well, almost a peaceful discourse. It is striking. While the chip rates, IPRs and other technological standards still remain at odds in our "family of standards," infrastructure representatives no longer want to talk about them. As a matter of fact, when I brought up related questions more from force of habit than from actual interest, a couple of representatives looked at me as if to say, "Didn't you get the new playbook?" Or maybe it was the horn that was growing out of my forehead.

Vendors now are articulating the plot of how delivery of faster data rates to carriers and formulation of services will serve as the only true springboard to 3G. The object of their affection embraces the acceleration of data rates and revelation of the tantalizing opportunities and services that carriers could offer ... if only they knew about them.

I applaud infrastructure companies for their novel approach. It is both refreshing and encouraging. After following the 2G story for years, I have grown to expect interviews to inevitably wend down the well-trodden paths of why this technology is better or why that migration path is smoother or how this technology casts a larger footprint. Even as the technologies began to mature, we all heard that most vendors were technology agnostics, though the economies of scale would be much improved with one technology.

The industry seems to have come to the realization simultaneously that data is what will take wireless carriers into the next millennium, not proving that their technology is best. In this realization, it also has accepted the hot potato that while carriers are masters at selling voice, they still are somewhat novices when it comes to moving large numbers of subscribers into the data ranks. For that they need help. Who better than the vendors that are making these speedy rates a reality? Working in partnership with their customers, vendors are delivering data's migration path as promised. However, they also are telling us that they want to demonstrate the vast potential of data's wonderful killer applications. As data evolves and succeeds in today's 2G and 2.5G systems, they reason, carriers will have the motivation for moving quickly to 3G.

It is not that 3G requires such massive investment and justification, certainly not that of 2G, but vendors are tilling the soil so that carriers and their customers will crave, if not demand, that huge data pipeline sooner rather than later. The story is about making the data pipeline as much of a thriving success as voice. Without this new chapter, they seem to be saying that there is no story at all.