Come one come all, says GSMA's Ehrlich
11 February 2008
Come one come all, says GSMA's Ehrlich
The GSMA opened its Mobile World Congress today with a bid to increase the organisation's reach. The show has been rebranded this year, from GSM World Congress, allowing the trade body to adopt a more neutral and inclusive approach to its work.
With an eye on the evolution to LTE, the GSMA is aware that the technology for which it was founded will not be around for ever. Some members of the CDMA cellular community, with which the GSMA has historically been at loggerheads, are likely to move towards LTE along with the GSM camp. US CDMA carrier Verizon Wireless, part owned by Vodafone, recently pledged allegiance to LTE and similar announcements can be expected from other CDMA operators.
With this in mind, GSMA chairman Craig Ehrlich predicted today that CDMA carriers will have representation within the organisation inside a year. In comments made to the GSMA's show daily publication, Ehrlich said:
"We need to be agnostic about the precise technologies being used - or not used - at the radio access layer. For some operators, for example, WiMAX may be a threat. For others it may be an opportunity. Irrespective of these individual considerations the GSMA needs to embrace the entire constituency, including CDMA operators."
This is a far cry from the technology holy wars that characterised the global cellular industry in the late 1990s and the early part of this century and reflects the ambition of the GSMA, an organisation set on expanding its influence.
Ehrlich also urged the mobile community to step up its interaction with national governments and regulatory organisations - an area close to the GSMA's heart.
In recent months the body has spoken in strong terms of its objections to European regulations on roaming rates, which have eaten into a lucrative revenue stream for the carriers. But, in keeping with the apparently open-armed theme of Ehrlich's introduction, he issued a welcome to Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner who has made reductions in mobile pricing a personal crusade.
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