Tài liệu GSM and UMTS (P6) ppt

Chapter 6: GSM Goes to North

America

Don Zelmer1

6.1 US Regulatory Status in the 1990s

During the first part of the 1990s, the regulatory climate in the US cellular environment was

fashioned by the components of the time. The migration from analogue to digital was under￾way. The TDMA/FDMA debate had finished and a decision had been made (with TDMA

winning) and the TDMA/CDMA public relations wars were in full swing. CDMA was

thought by some to be the saviour of the world, capacity wise, and others were firmly

committed to TDMA and some even to enhancements of TDMA.

A new US President took office in 1993 and one of the concepts that was brought forward,

by his administration, was the idea of auctioning spectrum to the highest bidder within certain

bounds. The concept was further elaborated in that a portion of spectrum, in the 1900 MHz

band, that had historically been used for point to point microwave, and had recently been

designated as Future Public Land Mobile Telecommunications System (FPLMTS) spectrum

by the ITU, would be auctioned by the US government. The idea was to relieve increasing

capacity problems in the 850 MHz wireless band and to increase revenue to help to balance

the US budget.

With so many different options apparently available, the US Federal Communications

Commission (FCC), under the leadership of Reed Hundt, came up with some novel concepts

for licensing a portion of the FPLMTS band, which eventually became known as Personal

Communication Services (PCS). A plan was put into place that would grant companies, that

proposed new and innovative technological concepts, commercial licenses to try, build, and

perfect their concepts, which were called ‘‘Pioneer Preference Licenses’’. The licenses were

to be sold at a discount compared to the auctioned commercial licenses. In January 1994,

three of the 50 candidates were successful and received licenses at a discounted cost based on

a ‘‘technology beauty contest’’: Omnipoint, American Personal Communications and Cox

Enterprises.

1 Editor: Don Zelmer, Cingular Wireless ([email protected]); Contributors: Chris Wallace, Nokia (chris.-

[email protected]), Ed Ehrlich, Nokia ([email protected]), Gary Jones, VoiceStream (gary.jones@voices￾tream.com), Mark Younge, VoiceStream ([email protected]), Quent Cassen, Conexant

([email protected]), Alain Ohana, Cingular Wireless ([email protected]), Mel Woinsky, Tele￾com Standards Consulting ([email protected]), Asok Chatterjee, Ericsson ([email protected]), The

views expressed in this module are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of his affiliation entity.

GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication

Edited by Friedhelm Hillebrand

Copyright q 2001 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBNs: 0-470-84322-5 (Hardback); 0-470-845546 (Electronic)