Single standard needed for mobile

Huawei has called for a single transmission protocol for mobile communications

Mobile communications need to settle on a single transmission protocol to help drive worldwide growth across the entire segment, according to telecoms network provider Huawei.

As the growing mobile community demands ever more coverage, speed and services from their providers, the need for open standards becomes increasingly important.

Developing countries are turning to mobiles for basic communication, and developed markets are looking for new services such as mobile broadband, email, TV and remote access. But the lack of interoperability makes life increasingly difficult and raises costs as well.

"The telecoms market is getting more standardised, particularly in the wireless space," said Charles Huang, president of global marketing at Huawei.

"In the past there were many different standards, many of which can still be seen today such as Code Division Multiple Access, Global System for Mobile Communications, Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, WiMax and wireless local area networks.

"Also, in different countries they adopt different standards and systems, which causes problems for subscribers when roaming in different areas. However in the future I think they will all be integrated into Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology."

LTE is one of the emerging 4G protocols competing with the likes of WiMax, and is an all-IP system based on a new modulation technology called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) and a new antenna technology known as Multiple Input/Multiple Output.

OFDM uses a bundle of adjacent narrowband carriers transmitted in parallel at different frequencies from the same source, making it highly resistant to multipath interference.

LTE aims not only to increase capacity and throughput, but to improve latency, a necessity for applications like VoIP and gaming.

Huang compared today's situation in the mobile market to the early days of fixed-line telephony whereby adoption and usage were dramatically hindered by the use of Time Division Multiplexing, where every vendor and area had their own proprietary protocols making it very difficult to connect callers on different networks.

He argued that this diversity adds a layer of complexity and cost for all players in the market from the core to the edge, affecting not just the suppliers, but the end users as well.

"We are very optimistic about our wireless product line because in the future, with development and more business requirements from customers in terms of bandwidth and traffic, there will be rapid growth and even greater demand, particularly on the base stations," said Huang.

Huawei is developing a range of smaller base stations which are easier to deploy, and is focusing on the development of femtocells in well connected areas and more compact and distributed base stations for rural and developing areas, many of which lack even basic connectivity.

"Huawei is a strong advocator and participant of openness, co-operation and standardisation, and is actively taking part in the development of standards as a member of many global standards organisations," concluded Huang.