 | Issue: | Asia-Pacific 2004 |
| Article no.: | 5 | |
| Topic: | Global Information Society, Global Networks, and Global Standards | |
| Author: | Xie Daxiong | |
| Title: | Senior Vice-President | |
| Organisation: | ZTE | |
| PDF size: | 100KB |
About author
Xie Daxiong is the Senior Vice-President of ZTE. Previously, while he was Vice-President and General Manager of ZTE’s CDMA Division, ZTE became one of the leading global CDMA equipment vendors and built its CDMA R&D and marketing structures. As the Senior Vice-President of ZTE Corporation Mr Xie has taking especial interest in developing the company’s R&D system. Mr Xie is responsible for ZTE’s overall R&D planning. To date, ZTE has set up 13 wholly-owned R&D centres worldwide and has undertaken research partnerships with giant electronics companies throughout the world. Xie Daxiong earned his Master’s degree from the Nanjing Science and Technology University.
Article abstract
Currently, networks are mostly developed to meet local needs without an overall global plan. This causes problems: subscribers must learn many different ways of working; operators have to maintain several independent networks, each with their own problems; and manufacturers face high levels of risk about which technologies to support. Standards form the basis and guarantee for industry development and introduce certainty to the market for all parties. The ITU and other ISOs must lead the way in creating and enforcing standards globally.
Full Article
The rise of economic globalisation, as well as the availability of inexpensive telecommunications, has led people around the world to communicate more and more frequently with one another. To handle this traffic, the basis for today’s information society, an infrastructure must be built, maintained, and constantly upgraded. It is this worldwide telecommunications infrastructure that lets people throughout the world communicate – by voice, email text or even with images – easily and rapidly. It is this global infrastructure that lets people enjoy the easy, convenient communication with all their friends that enriches their lives; as a saying goes, bosom friends are as close as neighbours no matter where they actually live – even if it is in the remotest corner of the earth. Unfortunately, the development of the global networks, as it is currently undertaken, cannot be considered satisfactory. Driven by often-conflicting demands, by the needs of commercial and residential users and by the plans and goals of the wide variety of operating companies, today’s networks are a patchwork that has developed independently and without an overall plan. In addition, the diversification of technologies and standards leads to a series of “isolated” systems, using essentially incompatible technologies. Consequently, the intercommunication between the local networks that comprise the global network is often quite poor. A good deal of technical ingenuity is needed to make all these relatively incompatible pieces work well together. This causes a number of problems. For subscribers, the complexity and diversification of the networks, means they often have to use different terminals, different types of equipment, to access each network. When they need to move information from one network to another, they suffer from the inconvenience of providing special equipment, of using special procedures, to assure effective intercommunication between the systems. For telecom operators, the need for special, separate systems for different types of traffic, means that a single operator may operate several “independent” networks – perhaps, a fixed network, a data network and, among others, a mobile network – all at the same time. Each of these networks, because of the differing technologies employed, must be managed, maintained, and developed on an individual basis. It is also quite difficult for the operator to make an overall plan, and develop a smoothly functioning integrated operation based on the use of existing, technically different, resources. This, of course, results in higher operational costs and leads to lower efficiency of resource usage and allocation. What is worse are the risks the operator is exposed to, due to the danger involved in selecting and integrating systems based on different standards. Manufacturers must also face the higher commercial and technological risks inherent in trying to master and deal with diversified and multi-path technologies and standards. These problems will ultimately influence, and be costly for, both operators and end-users. In a word, due to the rapid, uncoordinated growth in diverse technologies, for want of an integrated solution, the market has been fragmented by the tendency to use a variety of diversified products based upon multiple standards. In the communications field, a multitude of standardisation organisations – backed by different interest groups – have emerged. Each of these performs research on standards from the viewpoint of their group’s interest. The fact, however, is that up to now the technologies have penetrated each other, manifested by the cross-connection between, and overlapping of, standards. Because of the shortage of overall planning and deployment, the diversified standards may lead to weaknesses in compatibility, interoperability, and coordination. This being the case, the issue to be urgently resolved is that of coordinating and unifying the diversified technical standards, so that the technologies and standards can work under the same general plan and the globalisation of information can proceed apace. Market Demand – the “Driving Force” Behind Standards Standards are the basis for, and guarantee of, industrial development. That is why the starting point for, and ultimate goal of, standards research is to serve product research and development. In the market, it is the simple and low-cost products that survive. Without industry-wide standards, each product is special, there is no economy of scale, and, although the individual device may be simple, the overall technological scenario is complex. One can only conclude, then, that standards research needs to centre itself on the practical rules and demands of the industry and of the market. Standards research needs to be conducted both horizontally and vertically. “Horizontally” refers to the need for different countries, regions, and telecom operators to have their networks interconnected and inter-networked; “vertically” refers to need for the network technology, itself, to evolve to ever more advanced levels. Standards research should be centred upon resolving the problem of the existing lack of balance between the technical development, as well as the differing demands, across the world’s regions. Globally, the research on standards needs to be conducted at different levels to meet different needs. At the first level, we seek to guarantee the optimisation and interconnection of networks using a unified deployment scheme as the global communication networks evolve. On the second level, when complying with the international standards, different countries and regions should be able to add certain local features to the standards without affecting the interconnection and inter-networking between their networks. In addition, network evolution is a gradual process, which should proceed smoothly and be backward-compatible with existing technologies. This is very important, both to make full use of the operators’ investment and to serve the end-users. It is important not to overstress the concept of “generation” – i.e. 2G, 2.5G, 3G – or the difference between generations, since this can result in a “generation gap.” It is our hope that ITU and other ISOs can reshape their core roles and status in the research on telecommunication standards, and can unify and deploy the global efforts by coordinating among different parties to achieve a “multi-win” situation. We hope the ITU, and other standards organisations, will be able to formulate standards with open interfaces based upon the needs of a global network. We also hope that ITU, and the other ISOs concerned, can organise the cooperation among the parties on the same supply chain. They need, also, to communicate actively with telecom operators in developing countries, and understand their demands, in order to secure support from the different parties and interests when formulating their standards. In this way, the standards, when applied, will have a binding force on all parties.
