[ga-roots] Lessons from mobile phones (Re: A point of agreement)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>]

At 21:57 29.05.2001 -0400, Milton Mueller wrote:
>Harald:
>See comments below.
>
> >>> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> 05/29/01 16:15 PM >>>
>I certainly know that it is illegal to operate 900 MHz Wavelan cards in
>Europe, because it causes harmful interference with GSM phones; those bands
>have been set aside for GSM usage in Europe.
>Similarly, it is illegal to operate 900/1800 MHz band GSM phones in the US,
>since it causes harmful interference with other usages for which those
>bands have been allocated.
>
>MM replies:
>Perfect. It proves my point: you understand technical
>incompatibility but fail to appreciate the economic
>and political factors which might lead to competing
>standards.

Wonderful. You choose to ignore the facts and use the example you started 
with to attack my understanding of economic and political factors. Please 
stop the personal attacks, and try to talk about the facts.

What I said above was simply a statement of current law. Do you think my 
statement of what the current law is is correct or not?

>  The key questions here:
>
>1. Why are those American products not
>compatible with the European frequency allocations?
>Why is there not one global system? Should the technology competition be 
>banned?

The US government chose not to participate in the global effort to allocate 
a single world-wide frequency band for using a single technology.
The speculation I have heard most often is that the US government believed 
that its phone industry would have a better position in a fragmented market 
than it would have had in a truly global one.

>2. Would we get global wireless compatibility if
>America shouts at Europe, "I am the authoritative
>standard" and Europe shouts at America, "I am the
>authoritative standard"??

We have something quite close to global wireless compatibility, because the 
US has given in and allocated parts of the 1900 MHz spectrum for GSM usage, 
and a few manufacturers have made products that can use both this and the 
900/1800 MHz spectrum.

You can interpret this as Europe (or the standards organizations thereof) 
shouting "I am the authoritative GSM standard" (note: NOT "the 
authoritative phone standard"), and the US saying "OK, you can operate the 
GSM standard in these frequency bands here".

The price, range and quality of phones for the extended spectrum is still 
lousy compared to the price, range and quality for 900/1800; the standards 
war is still costing consumers real money.

Note: The global compatibility did NOT come about by allowing CDMA 
operation in the GSM band or by getting phones to operate both GSM and CDMA.

I will spin off the rest in other threads.

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