The GSM Association, representing the world's leading digital cell-phone faction, attacked competing standard supporters at a recent meeting in Cannes, France, for spreading "misinformation" about its favored standard, wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA). With 80% of digital wireless carriers specifying W-CDMA, the GSMA considers it the de facto global standard.
These battles aren't unique. Standards have become one of the most elusive issues in the industry and also one of the most politicized.
At their best, technical standards meet the immediate needs of the manufacturer, and hopefully, the marketplace. Increasingly, though, their development lags behind the technology. Some vendors are jumping into the market even before standards are finalized.
"People jump the gun," says Howard Sachs, president and CEO of fabless ASIC house Telairity Semiconductor and former president of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance, the standards organization for developing hardware and software for system-on-a-chip (SoC) design and design reuse. "They're trying to get some quick market share."
IEEE 802.11 is an all-too-excellent example. Companies such as Linksys Group, Melco, Belkin, D-Link, Buffalo Technology, Proxim, and semiconductor houses Texas Instruments, Intersil, Broadcom, and others are shipping devices based on an IEEE draft standard of 802.11g wireless local-area networks. The "g" version of the standard isn't expected to be finalized until June (see "802.11: What The Letters Mean," p. 52). In fact, Broadcom has already shipped 2 million chip sets based on the 802.11g draft.
"Since 802.11g is not yet a standard, it's clear that the market is ahead of the standard by several months," says analyst Will Strauss, head of Forward Concepts. Strauss expects the 802.11a market to have a very short life, giving way to mostly converged 802.11b and 802.11g devices.
Rather than attempt to get involved in interoperability and performance tweaks at a later date, some vendors, including Agere Systems and Hewlett-Packard, plan to wait until the standard is ratified before shipping 802.11g-based products. Avaya, Motorola, and Proxim announced plans to jointly develop products that marry 802.11 with cell-phone networks.
Reports of interoperability problems of 802.11g products have begun to mount. Some of these devices can't talk to each other, and there are cases of 802.11g devices reverting to the slower-speed 802.11b in mixed 802.11b/g networks.
STANDARD SIDE EFFECTS Carriers and their suppliers are pressured to deliver on the wireless data vision they've promoted for years. Yet they now realize that revenue-generating wireless content can't realistically be created without openness to developers, interoperability, and standards. But according to Jessica Figueras, a senior analyst at Ovum Research, wireless equipment vendors like Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola may also want to consider the side effects of greater openness.
"For some time," she says, "these vendors have been part of an exclusive club of suppliers to wireless carriers." In fact, they have been extending their dominance with new carrier offerings like browsing and messaging. "But the forces of standardization and convergence are already driving long-term changes in the industry, which will make things uncomfortable for some wireless vendors."
Figueras sees two forces at work here. First, opening up to content providers and developers means allowing other software vendors into the market. Additionally, and perhaps making an even bigger impact, she says, carriers are now changing their approach to investment in software. The new focus is on rapid and flexible development and integration. This is because creating new applications and connecting to new partners is now an ongoing and dynamic process. "Users of technology often can't afford to wait before implementing the functionality they need," she notes.
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