Stuart Corner
Friday, 07 September 2007 18:14
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Today, the GSM family of technologies is claimed to account for 85 percent of the global mobile services market, which accounts for about 1.6 percent of global GDP.
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of Australia's first cellular telephone service, operated by Telstra (then Telecom Australia) which had a legislated monopoly on domestic communications. This meant that Telecom not only operated the network but dictated which vendors could supply handsets and what models they could sell.
Telstra chose the AMPS technology developed in the US over the rival European TACS technology. When the time came to make a transition to digital technology the market had undergone a degree of deregulation and the choice of digital technology was in the hands of Austel (the forerunner of today's ACMA.
Australia opted for GSM over the digital version of the AMPS technology (DAMPS), although when this decision was made (1990) there was no clear leader. The decision was, in retrospect, the right one (New Zealand chose DAMPS) and is now in the process of shutting down what has become an orphan network.
Another possible contender was CDMA which had emerged from nowhere to become a credible international standard. Had it been a little more mature when the decision was taken it could well have been picked in preference to GSM. CDMA was developed by a then relatively small US company called Qualcomm which claimed significant advantages for it over both DAMPS and GSM. Much to the surprise of many the US standards bodies eventually recognised it as a standard.
