GSM's World Phone

The prospect of a "world phone" is intriguing: One phone that works wherever you are.

The reality, however, is more complex.

Much of the difficulty in discussing the possibility of a world phone stems from the lack of a clear definition of what constitutes a world phone.

NOT A CHANCE If you take a literal definition of world phone, you would have a single phone that works on a single frequency all over the world.

"What you use in one city is the same as what you use in a different country, which is the same as on a different continent," said Ray Jodoin, In-Stat senior analyst. "Then it is truly a world phone."

Proponents of a world phone have long hoped for such a system to connect people from all parts of the globe, with a target date as early as the turn of the century. Yet according to Jodoin, the way things stand now offers little hope of such a phenomenon happening any time soon, as a number of technological and economic issues have kept a true global phone from advancing past the concept state.

One obstacle is that much of the industry is not dealing on the same wavelength -- literally. Jodoin said the United States auctioned PCS licenses using those frequencies that the rest of the world was holding back for a universal phone. Consequently, transmissions are made in the 900MHz, 1. 9GHz and 1.8GHz spectrums, making same-band transmissions impossible.

The disparate technologies among world regions make it all the more difficult. Although GSM is dominant in Europe and Asia, it has a long way to go in the Western Hemisphere. The United States boasts just a small fraction of the estimated 82 million total GSM customers, with only 1.8 million.

"I live in Arizona, and we don't have GSM anything," Jodoin said. "I don't care what some organization wants to call it, but any phone that I can't use to talk to someone from here is not a world phone."

The emergence of other technologies such as CDMA complicates the world-phone scenario further. According to a report from In-Stat, CDMA continues to gain market share on a worldwide scale as businesses turn to the newer technology.

"The telephone system that we call CDMA is a newer system, is a newer design and has improvements on what was out there 10 years ago -- GSM among other things," Jodoin said. "In certain parts of the world, they don't have a commitment to an older technology, so they are picking up CDMA."

AROUND THE CORNER For all the reasons thrown up against the world phone becoming a reality, there are those who believe it is imminent.

"I think at this point it is basically a given that it is going to happen," said Jim Healy, GSM North America chairman and Cook Inlet Western Wireless president. "There are various dates being discussed, but I don't think (a global phone) is too far out in the future."

Healy and others cite a number of developments indicating that the industry is leaning toward the introduction of a global phone. Although domestic GSM subscriber totals are relatively low, worldwide figures are expected to explode as recent commitments have been made by various parts of China, including network expansions in the Hunan Province.

Multiband phone technology also has made tremendous strides in joining users on several frequencies throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East and United States. Dual-band phones such as those from Bosch Telecom, which are distributed by Audiovox in the United States, and Siemens, recently have become available, combining GSM 1.9GHz and 900MHz. The phones will make it simpler for travelers to take their phones with them to Europe, but they will not help much for those headed to other parts of the world, such as Asia. Although companies remain hesitant to commit to an actual release date, tri-band units are also on the horizon, adding 1.8GHz to the mix and opening up other regions to U.S. GSM travelers.

According to Don Warkentin, Aerial Communications president, it is realistic that any new GSM phone is going to work on all the GSM frequencies. He said the underlying cost of doing a tri-band is coming down so much that in two or three years, subscribers will be able to buy a tri-band phone that is relatively inexpensive.

Not everybody is jumping on the multiband bandwagon, however. Some companies are hanging back to see how much demand there actually is going to be fo r these phones. There is an economy-of-scale issue at work, Jodoin said. Companies have to question whether the quantity of subscribers willing to buy the phones is enough to justify maintaining an assembly line.

INTEGRATING SATELLITES Healy said that other avenues, such as satellite systems based on GSM technology, could expand coverage to include more remote areas currently not reached by ground-based systems. A group of satellite operators was inducted into the GSM MoU at its recent plenary in Warsaw, Poland. Healy said the operators use GSM as their core technology with plans to roam back and forth between terrestrial GSM and satellite GSM.

"If you have a phone that handles GSM 900MHz, 1,900MHz and 1,800MHz, and you picked up satellite to fill in the blanks, I think you've pretty much covered it," Healy said

New technologies, such as software-defined phones, remain under development and may at some point settle the world phone question. This concept would allow manufacturers to construct units around a single platform -- considerably fewer than the 1,000 or so handset models that are in production today. Units would feature a single chipset that can operate over any air interface and frequency, with software managing the multimode/multiband concerns.

Whether the prospect of a world phone is just over the horizon or a long way down the road depends on your point of view. But multiband technology may just give GSM carriers an edge in courting the world traveler.