by MIKE DANO, RCR Wireless News - May 27, 2002
The Mobile Wireless Internet Forum last month managed a significant feat-the group brought members of the GSM, CDMA and Internet segments of the wireless industry together in one workshop in order to hammer out the framework for a harmonized core network architecture.
"It is a little difficult," admitted John Waclawsky, the MWIF's technical committee chair and a member of Cisco Systems' senior technical staff.
Rivals ranging across the wireless spectrum-from Qualcomm Inc. and the GSM Association to NTT DoCoMo and KDDI to Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp. to VoiceStream Wireless Corp. and Sprint PCS-all gathered together in early April in Toronto to discuss the MWIF's goals. In all, more than 100 people representing 47 different companies participated in the workshop. By the end of the meeting, workshop participants managed to come up with a recommendations document they promised to take back to their respective standards groups, including the Third Generation Partnership Project and the CDMA-focused 3GPP2. The MWIF works as a standards-influencing body rather than a standards-development organization.
While getting such heated rivals together in one place is an accomplishment in and of itself, the MWIF's recommendations' document is perhaps even more ambitious. The document is a framework outlining how disparate network architectures, including GSM and CDMA networks, can be made to work together-or harmonized.
"The operators would like to see a plug-and-play environment," Waclawsky said. "The idea of the workshop was to come up with some harmonies. We're trying to reduce the cost of running these architectures."
Founded in early 2000, the MWIF has been working to get network operators-both wireless and wireline-to agree to build and use a single core network architecture that would work seamlessly, regardless of how users access it. Essentially, network operators would share similar back-end systems while their access technologies, such as GSM or CDMA, would differ. This would allow all network operators to purchase and use the same server and database products-thereby cutting costs.
"This all equates to money," Waclawsky said.
While the end goal seems lofty, the MWIF realizes the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Participants in last month's workshop agreed to take a phased approach to the process by beginning in areas that are already similar. The participants decided to start with the Internet protocol-based multimedia systems of a network, and will create a single reference model to construct future IP multimedia systems.
Waclawsky describes the group's short-term goal as interworking, with the long-term goal of convergence, or harmonization. By creating interworking networks, operators will be able to share important information such as subscribers' presence and location information. This will allow operators to provide seamless services while at the same time cutting costs. However, Waclawsky said, the group's long-term goal of complete core infrastructure convergence is not lost on MWIF members.
"We wouldn't have had the workshop unless people understood harmonization," he said.
MWIF members include Alcatel, Cisco, 3Com, NTT DoCoMo, IBM, Intel, KDDI, Nokia, Qualcomm, Sprint, T-Mobile and Sun Microsystems.
Mobile Wireless Internet Forum