It's your first trip to South Africa and you're in the Kruger Park, with an elephant crossing the road in front of you. Wouldn't it be nice to let your elderly parents back home in Germany share the experience? No problem. Just call them up on your cellphone and scan it towards the elephant so that the beast fills the screen. Mom and Pop will see it on their phone screen back home.
Want them to catch a glimpse of Table Mountain when you make it down to the Cape? Just call them up.
Futuristic? Scarcely. Videotelephony is just around the corner, and Siemens has already developed its first prototype video cellphones. Torsten Drzisga, Vice President Market Trends & Strategy for Siemens Information & Communication Networks, described the above travel scenarios during a talk on UMTS at the GSM conference in Cape Town last week.
Multimedia services such as videotelephony and the much-talked-about Internet access on the move will be enabled by technologies such as UMTS, which will in the future replace GSM as the mobile standard with the highest penetration worldwide.
The transition to broadband third-generation mobile systems will take place gradually, said Drzisga, with several intervening technologies leading the way. We'll hear lots more about technologies such as General Packet Radio Services (GPRS), which is an enhancement to GSM technology and a stepping stone to broadband, and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) which brings the interactive experience of the Internet to the mobile phone.
Drzisga said that GSM and GPRS will co-exist for a while, and the market will start to be exposed to some sophisticated applications with the help of WAP, such as wireless Internet access via a cellphone. But it is only once UMTS is here, with vastly improved data transmission speeds, that such services will be the daily fare of the mass market.
The need for mobile data solutions is being driven by the general trend toward convergence of the two mass-market trends of mobile and Internet communication. As Drzisga puts it, "most people with Internet also have a cellphone", and it is UMTS that will provide the platform for these converging applications.
Citing another mass market application, Drzisga said: "At the moment you have a fixed phone line at home, you're on an intranet at the office and you have a cellphone. With UMTS you will simply be able to have one phone, from which you can access everything, everywhere.
"UMTS will take users into the future Information Society by delivering voice, data and multimedia services, as required, directly to the end-user in any environment."
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Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
Mobile communications are one of the fastest-growing segments in the telecommunications market. In 1998 the growth rate was about 50 percent, and by the end of 1999 some 400 -million people worldwide will be using mobile phones - over 200 million of them with GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication), the de-facto world standard.
Data transmission handled by mobile technology is set to increase even more sharply in the future. The general trend toward convergence, which is enabling data and voice networks, fixed and mobile networks, means that mobile multimedia communication will also become increasingly important. Over the next five years an annual increase of 70 percent is anticipated.
UMTS, the future global mobile communication system, is based on two duplexing modes: FDD and TDD. Incorporating both modes of operation in the design of UMTS allows for optimized service flexibility, simplifies the provisioning of the entire range of services and paves the way for seamless coverage around the globe. While the FDD mode provides larger coverages with full mobility, the TDD mode provides faster data speed in dense areas. The combination of both modes allows a wide range of services such as mobile Internet access, telebanking and electronic newspapers. These applications and services are becoming increasingly important in highly developed telecom markets. Siemens and NEC are currently running research projects on FDD and TDD in Asia and Europe.
On 12 November, Siemens announced an international joint venture with NEC for third generation mobile networks in a strategic move aimed at gaining maximum synergy and slashing time to market.
The UK-based joint venture, to be called Mobisphere, will put Siemens and NEC ahead of the competition as they will be the only two companies in the world which can immediately market, offer and service all major technologies for the third generation worldwide from the commercial start. In total, they will invest more than 1-billion euros in UMTS research and development within the next decade.
Siemens/NEC-developed UMTS systems are expected to reach the market at the end of 2001 and generate a volume of roughly 1.5-billion euros by 2004, about 20 percent of the estimated global market.
The first commercial operations are expected to start in Japan in 2001 and in the rest of the world in 2002. First UMTS networks will be installed in hot spots - city centres with a high subscriber density - and the current second generation mobile networks will continue to exist alongside them.