Seven's WiMAX play well-timed

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 27 September 2007 12:42

Opinion and Analysis

Déjà vu! A decade ago when GSM was an emerging and far from global digital cellular technology and facing a strong rival in the US-promoted digital AMPS standard as a strong rival - and Australia was debating whether to go GSM or D-AMPS - Ericsson was very vocal in its support for D-AMPS.

Australia went GSM, GSM went Global and Ericsson went on to become market leader in GSM (and 3G) infrastructure. But here is what they were saying in 1997 (from one of my articles at the time).

"Ericsson is promoting cellular technology based on the IS-136 [D-AMPS] standard as the ideal technology for use in Australia in the 800MHz band soon to be vacated by Telstra's AMPS cellular service. Ericsson held a briefing in Sydney for press, carriers and potential carriers to promote the concept that the IS-136 technology can provide cellular mobile, wireless office, cordless home phone and wireless local loop functionality for voice and high speed data.

Ericsson claims that the key feature of IS-136, which puts it ahead of rival technologies and in particular GSM, is its ability to support hierarchical cell structures. This would enable one handset to operate on a public D-Amps mobile network and as a wireless PABX extension on a smaller cell structure spanning a company's office.

Ericsson said that a D-AMPS network could provide local access as an alternative to "digging up the street". It claims that the largest fixed wireless installation to date, in Malaysia, uses Ericsson's D-AMPS/AMPS technology. It is being used to provide additional capacity in high density urban areas.

Ericsson also claims that D-AMPS is ideal for data communications: it is the first cellular technology to support cellular packet data at 19.2kbps and capacity will increase to 32 and 64kps and IS-136 will be able to support circuit switched data at 2Mbps.

The moral of this story: take all claims on the relative merits of different technologies with a large pinch of salt.