The Nokia Page

 

Some new information, the TDMA path to 4G

Nokia and AT&T Wireless On Track to Deliver 3G Services

My new Nokia phone

Nokia rethinks WAP

1G, 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G: As I see it

Why you are going to wait for 3G

The Nokia influence on Finland

 

Some new information, the TDMA path to 4G

AT&T has announced it will move from its present operating system, IS-136, to another TDMA based system, GSM. It appears both operating systems will co-exist for some time. How this will work out in practice remains to be seen. GSM is a technique originally European that has now gone global.

Both IS-136 and GSM are digital or second generation cellular systems. Both are TDMA based. But AT&T has gone beyond second generation to 2.5G, since their newest offering includes GPRS or Global Packet Radio Service. Only for business users right now, GPRS is an advanced packet switched data network that promises more services and higher data transfer rates than the original Cellular Data Packet Data or CDPD technology common across America.

The official name then for AT&T's new service is GSM/GPRS. In a confusing press release short on facts, originally here at http://www.attws.com/press/releases/2001_07/071701.html, and of course now pulled, AT&T left many questions unanswered. I wanted to know how the GSM/GPRS system will co-exist with the existing IS-136/CDPD service which AT&T will continue to support. They mention the word overlay. In asking Mark van der Hoek about that, I offered my opinion first and he responded. My comments are first:

Mark, although I'm normally a big proponent of future technology, I am worried that 3G and 4G will provide us with expensive, balky services we may not want. Are we working on a wireless version of the video telephone? That landline telephone project, the most spectacular failure of the Bell System, cost them and their rate payers hundreds of millions of dollars over three decades. It produced a technology available only in a few cities, appealed to just a few people, and could be afforded by fewer still. A wireless video phone is the logical counterpart to the original video phone and is what 3G and 4G will enable. But will it work? For whom? At what cost?

We're still having problems keeping basic wireless calls connected and that will remain a problem with future services. Data intensive technology like video will only increase the difficulty. People rarely wanted to see each other face to face while communicating over a telephone and we must assume that preference will remain the same today. Today's business video conferencing market suggests buyers, as do parents keeping track of their kids, as well as emergency services monitoring those it must rescue, aid, or kill. It will obviously be an expensive service, priced to the corporate market. And then and there only as niche segment. I'm not sure how this will work out. . . .

"Tom, in general, overlay is slapping another network on top of your existing system. We did this with CDMA in 800 MHz. We cleared some of the analog spectrum, and used it for CDMA. That's almost certainly what AT&T will do. Since the channel bandwidths are incompatible, they'll clear out some TDMA channels and use that spectrum for GSM. They'll offer the new services on those channels, but customers will need to by a new phone to make use of them. As they shift enough customers to the new service, they'll clear another band of TDMA and install another GSM channel(s). It's not fun, because you have to clear the spectrum (crowding your existing customers into what's left) before you can offer the new services."

"My view is the the "demand" for 3G services, especially data, is largely in the minds of the industry - the analysts and marketing boobs - rather than in the minds of the customers. Yes, there is some market for it now, and that will grow, but most of it is hype right now. Witness Metricom's fiasco. How is it a mobile data technology with no handoff?"

"I think something similar is going on with mobile data. Because the Internet is The Big Thing, people are simply assuming that it will translate to mobile. That's not necessarily true. How many ordinary people really want to run around with a laptop? "Oh, but you won't need a laptop! You'll surf the 'Net with your phone!" Bull. Even if you can get the needed bandwidth, even if you can get the needed processing power, you still have that tiny screen. Until there are some major breakthroughs in that area, mobile Internet is going to be a niche."

"And, it is a fundamental change in the way people use phones. Phones are for talking to other people. That's the mind set. It can change, but not overnight. And talking can be done while walking the mall or driving the freeway. (NY notwithstanding.) Talking can go with the flow of what you are already doing - that's why cellular took off. But surfing the net requires almost exclusive attention - it does not lend itself to multitasking very well. Surfing requires you to Stop What You Are Doing And Do Something Else. Analysts are not recognizing that. It's not just another use of the phone. It's a fundamentally different thing. In terms of mind set, it's not a phone at all."

"Will it come? Probably. There IS a market for more than 5 computers on the face of the earth. ;-) But there's not a market for 10 billion right now, and there's not a big market for mobile data. Japanese techies who buy every gadget that comes along may be the future of the western world, but it's not the present. . ."

The following is the original press release, before the rollout in mid-July, 2001:

June 4, 2001

Nokia and AT&T Wireless On Track to Deliver 3G Services

Companies' close collaboration will fine tune UMTS digital technology

Redmond, Washington and Irving, Texas -- Businesses and consumers in the United States will not be left out of the "wireless evolution' as Nokia and AT&T Wireless continue working on digital standards that promise to deliver streaming video, CD-quality audio and other content-rich services to mobile phones, PDAs and laptops over an IP-based network.

The companies, currently working on a high speed 3G technology known as Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE), have now expanded their focus to include developing and testing the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) technology that will be the foundation of 3G multimedia services. The project includes testing UMTS and the protocols that will enable voice, data and video services to run on a highly efficient IP-based network.

"We are convinced of the significant competitive advantages for all AMPS/TDMA/GSM operators to participate now in the deployment of EDGE/UMTS business solutions for global 3G service,' stated Rod Nelson, chief technology officer for AT&T Wireless Services. "The specifications developed by the global GSM and TDMA community over the last two years offer a broad range of transition and deployment options for global 3G services with the greatest flexibility for subscribers and operators. The range of options include: GAIT handsets, GSM/GPRS deployment options in all 2G spectral bands (both initial and overlay), rapid and cost-effective upgrades to EDGE and UMTS 3G capabilities on a common global GPRS-evolved core network, and an overwhelming global scale of product options. The bottom line is delivering advanced wireless services that customers want and need around the corner and around the world. That's what 3G is really all about.'

"The close work between our companies has already reaped a huge amount of practical experience, which will be critical for AT&T Wireless to bring the first 3G services to the U.S.," said Dr. JT Bergqvist, senior vice president, 3G Business, Nokia Networks. "By extending this work to UMTS in addition to our current cooperation on EDGE, we are ready to demonstrate that all the elements will be in place for reliable, commercial deployment. It is a clear sign of the maturity of UMTS technology, as well as our system and our cooperation with a key customer."

In the past year, the two companies have completed several milestones in the trial project, including Voice over IP (VoIP) using Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) call control, Adaptive Multi-Rate speech codec (AMR), streaming audio and video, and simultaneous voice and data calls with Quality of Service (QoS) scheduling and handover.

The current cooperation agreement builds upon these milestones to begin validation of key technologies of the Nokia All-IP solution: IPv6, UMTS, and IP-based Service Architecture.

IPv6 updates the current version of the Internet protocol (IPv4) to allow a virtually limitless number of IP addresses, removing restrictions on the number of people or devices that can be accessed over the Internet in the future. This will be essential for operators to cater to the expected hundreds of millions of users of the Mobile Internet, and to establish proper quality of service and security in IP networks. Nokia was the first manufacturer to announce an All-IP mobility core for 3G networks based on IPv6.

Nokia and AT&T Wireless will base their validation efforts on releases R4 and R5 of the 3GPP International Standards for EDGE and UMTS high-capacity radio-interface technology. Release R4 brings improved packet traffic capabilities in the air interface, while R5 introduces All-IP-based core network standards, bringing end-to-end IP into the core network. IP-based service architecture (IPSA) is the solution used to create and provision advanced services in All-IP networks. Nokia anticipates that packet-switched traffic will exceed circuit switched in the mobility core network by 2005, and Nokia is committed to be first with the implementation of All-IP Mobility Core in 2002.

AT&T Wireless announced it would begin overlaying GSM/GPRS on its TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) network this year and is on schedule to begin introducing 2.5G service. The company will begin adding EDGE & UMTS in the 2002-2003 timeframe to provide the higher data rates that will make "true' 3G services such as streaming media using wireless devices practical. Nokia Networks will provide AT&T Wireless with GPRS-ready 850 and 1900 MHz radio network systems designed for seamless evolution to 3G, further supporting AT&T Wireless in its evolution to EDGE and UMTS third-generation services.

My new PCS phone, A Nokia 5190

I recently switched from conventional digital cellular service to what Pacific Bell calls PCS, which is actually GSM. (Personal communication service) The Pacific Bell Wireless network is now built out enough for me to trust that I will have service in the areas I travel to. I would not use PCS, though, if I traveled regularly through more remote areas. I do note, though, that some PCS phones now have an analog mode built in or available as an add on module. That means the phone defaults to AMPS where no PCS signal is available. Provided, of course, that your PCS carrier has an agreement with the rural carrier providing analog service. Sound somewhat unreliable? Then you may want to stick with conventional cellular that uses AT&T's nationwide cellular network. And even then, you should know that at least 60% of the country, geographically speaking, is still unserved by any kind of cellular radio.

The phone I'm using is a Nokia 5190, the lowest cost offering available, probably typical of what most people get. Even though it is a low cost phone, it does have some neat features, one of which points out a big difference between conventional cell phones and PCS handsets, namely, the SIM or subscriber information module. The SIM is a memory card that stores a customers' information and enables many services. It is small as the photograph shows and can be easily moved between PCS and GSM phones. A conventional cellular phone, by comparison, has no built in memory and relies instead on network resources which access a customers' account and coordinates the services they have selected. Without being pejorative, one device is smart and the other is dumb. Let me explain one feature made possible with a SIM card.

The current Nokia 5190 comes with 40 built in ring tones; you can select a few bars of anything from Mozart to Moby. I understand kids are fascinated by this feature, even composing their own tones with more expensive models. But you can choose from hundreds of additional tones even with this version. YourMobile.com once offered a huge, free selection. So how do these sound files get to your phone? The web site calls you! After you enter your selection and phone number the web site calls your mobile and delivers the ring tone as a data call. The phone identifies the call, in other words, as a ringtone delivery and automatically activates your list of dial tones. The right window pops up on your screen and from there you can preview the sound, delete it, or save it to memory. It's all quite slick and although perhaps trivial it does demonstrate what you can do with built in memory. I'll write more about the phone as I find out more.

Nokia rethinks WAP

Nokia put out an unusual press release yesterday, expressing misgivings, tangentially, about WAP. Rather than admitting problems with the technology, they quoted others, and gave details about a new report on the difficulty people are having. I think Nokia, Ericsson, and others are as wrong about WAP as they are right about Bluetooth; it's simply not what people want or what they expect. It was oversold as an idea and it got going too many years ago, when people were used to a slow, clunky internet.

Well, the net has changed since then and people don't want to go back. I still think the developers should have concentrated on a Lynx like browser if they wanted to do text, rather than coming up with a brand new language and a different way to do transmission. Having a closed platform doesn't help, either. WAP may get overtaken with new offerings before its problems can be worked out, much as ISDN, fifteen years in the making, got run over by ADSL technology. We shall see and I don't mean to put criticize these fine companies, I just have an honest difference of opinion with them. Some quotes from the press release (external link):

"Misguided design principles held over from the wireline Web are holding back WAP sites, says renowned Internet usability expert Dr. Jakob Nielsen. Publishing the findings from the Nielsen Norman Group's latest research study in an article on TheFeature.com, the leading mobile Internet community, Nielsen says that the results look very similar to those from early Web usability studies.

'It's striking how much our findings from this WAP usability study in late 2000 resemble several Web usability studies we conducted in 1994. It's truly déjà vu," he says. "Hopefully, mobility's evolution will follow that of the Web: When things got better in subsequent years -- especially around 1997 -- many more users got onto the Web and commercial use exploded.'

Nielsen says WAP offerings suffer because they are designed using principles optimized for the Web; in much the same way early Web design was hampered by people designing for it as if it were a brochure. To improve, providers must realize the limitations of the medium and account for them."

http://press.nokia.com/PR/200012/800873_5.html

1G, 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G: As I see it

Like mainframe computers of old, cellular radio systems are referred to by generation names. First generations systems were analog based, although they used some digital routines for signaling and setting up calls. Voice traffic was always analog, with one call per channel. AMPS, TACS, and NMT are first generation systems.

2G systems are fully digital with several calls multiplexed or put together on a single channel. GSM/PCS, IS-136, and JDC are all second generation systems. Some systems, like IS-136, and certain kinds of PCS phones, can fall back to analog working, but that isn't their primary operating method.

2.5G systems are coming on line now. They are helper or add on systems. They turn the focus from voice to data, 1G and 2G systems having being built for voice, using circuit switching techniques. 2.5 systems are data oriented, using technologies like GPRS and EDGE. They provide new data services by overlaying or working together with existing cellular systems and frequencies.

3G systems will work in new frequency bands, away from the spectrum of existing voice based cellular networks. Fully 3G systems will be completely dominated by data, especially the mobile internet, using packet switching. Voice traffic will be worked in somehow, but there are different plans on how to do that.

Marching toward 3G is Nokia's 9210 Communicator (external link), as Nokia optimistically puts it, "a dual band EGSM900/1800 integrated full service mobile communications terminal combining phone, fax, email, calendar, imaging, WAP and WWW. Support for the most commonly used PC office applications makes it possible to create Microsoft Word and Excel documents and view PowerPoint slides. A standard memory card of 16 MB extends the memory for installing new applications." They look to roll out the device in the first half of 2001. (Click here for Nokia's .pdf file on this GSM device. Some neat details.)

4G systems, although speculative at this point, promise universal telephone service, with any kind of phone working in any country, using whatever technology the local wireless carrier offers. 4G phones will accommodate different operating systems and frequencies through special hardware built into the phone, as well as software downloaded at the time from the local carrier. Or so the speculation goes.

Take a look at the wireless future, a technological Disneyland, by visiting NTT's site. It features some great graphics; look for the section on Wideband CDMA . . .

http://www.nttdocomo.com/

Why you are going to wait for 3G

The FCC will take until at least July, 2001 just to identify the spectrum third generation will use. After that there will be more reports, with the allocated radio bands put up to the highest bidder. But the auction won't happen until its rules are published, and those won't be go into print until at least December 2001, with the the actual auction happening six months later, in June 2002. Licenses won't be issued until at least September 2002, barring the usual lawsuits. When will services begin? In limited areas? 2003. At the earliest. Expect a welter of competing systems in the meantime, and even after 2003 you will see a variety of competing offerings, none of them working together, except in part, just as you have today with cellular radio. It will be an exciting future with amazing technology. But it will be confusing, costly, and delayed. For more on this, read Stuart Sharrock's article here.

Not in Finland Anymore? More Like Nokialand

By ALAN COWELL, The New York Times (All rights reserved)

February 6, 2002

ELSINKI, Finland, Feb. 1. After the company town, behold the corporate nation.

A decade or so ago, this icy outpost on Russia's flank was in deep trouble, its economy battered by the collapse of traditional markets in the old Soviet Union, a recession taking hold and one in five workers looking for a job. Cafes closed. Lights dimmed.

Then, according to Finland's modern mythology, came a business- class caped crusader, as a company producing everything from paper to rubber boots was inspired to believe that the future lay in the cellphones which now bind Finns and a total of a billion people in an invisible web around the world.

That company was Nokia, after a town of that name on a river of that name in southwest Finland.

As the decade progressed, Nokia advanced its multinational interests and expanded its work force, becoming the engine of Finland's economy, representing two thirds of the stock market's value and a fifth of the country's total exports.

At its peak, in March 2000, Nokia's stock was worth $300 billion, more than any other company in Europe. By last year, 37 of every 100 cellphones sold across the globe bore the Nokia stamp. The company's $25 billion in annual sales roughly equals the entire budget of the Finnish government, which finances one of the world's most-generous welfare states.

This impressive growth, now slowing somewhat in tandem with the broader world economy, has some Finns wondering if they have not, in fact, exchanged one master ó the Soviet Union ó for another.

Ilkka Uimonen/Corbis Sygma Thanks to Nokia, the giant cellphone manufacturer, Finland is the most interconnected nation in the world. In addition to relying on the devices, the country depends on the company to underpin the economy.

"We take everything that Nokia says as a signal," said Pasi Maenpaa, a sociologist who has studied the cellphone habit that has made Finland, a sparsely populated country of five million, the world's most interconnected nation.

"We have this new mythical story of Finland rising again and in this story, Nokia is kind of the main figure," he said. "Nokia pulled us up from the bottom of the recession. I could read that as proof that Nokia is a state within a state."

Leila Mustanoja, the former head of Finland's Fulbright Commission, who took Nokia to task last year over its policy in China and defiantly uses a Motorola cellphone, makes the comparison explicitly. "We used to have the Soviet Union that we would bow to," she says. "Now that is gone and we have Nokia."

Indeed, all Finland listened in recent days when Jorma Ollila, Nokia's chairman and chief executive, not only confirmed that growth had slowed last year, but also wondered aloud about lowering Finland's relatively steep income-tax rate (59 percent even on lower income brackets).

In those comments, Finns heard an executive whom they feared may be ready to pull out of the country, jeopardizing the tax base that supports the state's extensive welfare benefits. About 22,000 of Nokia's 54,000 employees worldwide are in Finland ó but they include 11,000 of its main research and development staff, as well as the top management who could work wherever the company chooses to have its headquarters. Another 20,000 people are estimated to work for companies that depend on Nokia for contracts.

(A company the size of Nokia in proportion to the population of its host country would, in the case of the United States, employ about 1 million people.)

The concerns over a Nokia pullout point at a deeper malaise ó the growing collision between a traditional, sheltered, high-tax society and the harsher, global rules by which Nokia is obliged to play. Only 1.47 percent of the Nokia's total sales occur in Finland, and more than 90 percent of its shares are held by people outside the country, particularly Americans, who clamor for higher valuations.

Nokia, said Ilkka Tuomi, a former executive with the company, "has opened Finnish society very quickly to global values." But it has also exposed the vulnerabilities of dependence on a company whose interests, ultimately, do not mainly lie at home.

As Nokia's rate of growth shrank last year for the first time since 1995, Finland's growth plummeted from 5 percent in 2000 to 0.7 percent in 2001, even though domestic economic conditions had not changed substantially, said a Jyrki Ali-Yrkko, a Finnish economist.

That has Finns worried.

"It is in the Finnish mentality to believe that, after lots of laughter, it will end in tears," said Minna Ruckenstein, a Finnish anthropologist and author of a new book based on her experiences living in California's Silicon Valley. "So they are asking: What happens after Nokia?"

Some Finns are also wondering whether the proliferation of other high-tech companies has introduced the get-rich-quick values of world technology markets at the expense of a deeper national yearning for egalitarianism.

"It's the first time in this egalitarian society that some people got rich quickly," said Olli Kivinen, a columnist at Finland's biggest newspaper. "There's a lot of envy, resentment of this money."

According to Mikko Puhakka, a venture capitalist, roughly 35 of Finland's 50 richest people made their money from Nokia jobs or stock holdings.

The challenge to the country's traditional values from the disparity between the new wave of millionaires and ordinary Finns came to light most famously last month when a top Nokia executive, Anssa Vanjoki, was fined a staggering $100,000 for a relatively minor speeding offense on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Mr. Vanjoki was traveling at 46 miles an hour in a 30-mile-an-hour zone. The fine, as is customary in Finland, was calculated as a proportion of his most recent audited earnings ó inflated in this case by the sale of Nokia stock that earned him in excess of $2 million.

The new inequalities have arisen rapidly: only in 1997 did Nokia's share price begin to zoom (until then, many foreigners who bought its mobile phones thought they were buying Japanese products).

Although the Internet bubble has burst and Nokia's share price is only around a third of its record highs in 2000, the company's influence on Finnish society is the clearest example of a broader collision of values within Europe's welfare states.

In the Nordic countries in particular, the state has long provided health care, education, unemployment benefits and pensions to citizens ready to pay high taxes. All Finnish schooling, for instance, is free; at colleges, the state pays students allowances starting around $300 a month to cover living expenses. People who lose their jobs receive benefits equivalent to full salary for 15 months.

While the high standard of education has been one factor in Nokia's success, high taxes has also tended to put a damper on initiative.

"There has not been a lot of incentive," said Mr. Tuomi, the former Nokia executive. "Taxation has made it very difficult to become rich."

Lauri Kivinen, a Nokia spokesman at the company's headquarters on an ice-bound Baltic inlet near Helsinki, explained the dichotomy of the new corporate state. "We have a very strong emotional attachment to this country," he said. "We love this country so we have to care." When Nokia's boss, Mr. Ollila, speaks about the country it is out of "a genuine worry for Finland," the spokesman said. And yet, indeed, high taxes mean "we have difficulty keeping skilled workers and attracting foreign skilled workers."

The new get-rich fever has not reached every Finn. Many still cherish the traditional ways and retreats, bucolic summer cottages with hand- pumped water and home saunas to take advantage of more than 18 hours of daylight, and fat stock portfolios.

"They have a nice house, two kids, a dog and a Volvo and it's a nice life," said Jarkko Joki-Tokola, a 29-year- old founder of a hi-tech start-up company, whose ambition is have his company's shares listed on the Nasdaq. "They have chosen not to take themselves to the ultimate limit and do everything to be a millionaire."

Some new information, the TDMA path to 4G

Nokia and AT&T Wireless On Track to Deliver 3G Services

My new Nokia phone

Nokia rethinks WAP

1G, 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G: As I see it

Why you are going to wait for 3G