The telecom industry has benefited greatly over the years from standards. Carriers can use equipment from several vendors, and with equipment interoperability comes economies of scale and faster adoption. Perhaps the best example of collaboration is the 3GPP/3GPP2, ETSI TISPAN and CableLabs all coming together to support the latest NGN and IMS standards - an industry first.
But despite the collective benefits, politics is never far away. Intellectual property rights of particular companies need to be resolved when a standard is thrashed out. More often than not the standard ends up being more complicated to accommodate the factions. Very rarely the gap can't be bridged and two standards emerge, splintering the market from the start.
There are also regional politics. Europe did particularly well from second generation cellular by making GSM a global standard. Other regions took note and made sure they weren't left behind the next time round. South Korea has been smart in using standards locally early enough to allow it to be adept at addressing markets worldwide. The latest examples of this are WiBRO and WDM-PON.
But what is one to make of China? China has still to issue 3G licenses but it is clear that its own TD-SCDMA standard will play a key role. It is also developing its own mobile-TV standard (does the world, with nearly a dozen mobile-TV standards, really need one more?). China is also considering its own passive optical networking (PON) standard.
China is unique in the size of its home market. And if the percentage of the population that can afford advanced telecom services is still small, it is growing. In turn, developing internal standards ensures Chinese telecom vendors reduce their exposure to foreign-held patents. Internal standards also help them develop the necessary expertise as well as ensure they have a local market where they compete favourably with foreign vendors.
But what is the point of introducing standards if they do not advance the industry? For example, what benefit is there in introducing yet another 3G standard that is several years behind the two existing ones?
TD-SCDMA may yet prove to be a superior 3G standard. But with the momentum and scale of existing 3G standards that is a tall order, especially when no external market has adopted TD-SCDMA. Moreover, Chinese firms such as ZTE are already active 3G handset and networking equipment players. The same is true for PON, where Chinese equipment vendors offer EPON and GPON.
One indicator of China's emergence as a key player on the world's telecom stage will be when its Ministry of Information Industry lets up on scripting local standards across the telecom landscape.
Is China being shrewd with its standards policy given the success of Chinese equipment vendors?
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3 comments:
China has benefited hugely from the size of its home market and its adherence to ETSI standards. This has allowed its own manufacturers access to other ETSI markets. It would be a monumental mistake, at this point, to begin to erect trade barriers in the form of domestic standards. Why? Despite the country's undoubted size and indigenous skills it needs the rest of the world in which to survive and thrive. And we need China as a free and open market for goods, services and access to its intellectual and human capital.
I disagree. Why not China? A standard has nothing to do with advancing technology. A standard has to do with ensuring multiple suppliers and some level of uniformity. The Chinese govt. and industrial organizations should create standards that give them the best opportunity to meet their requirements. Everyone does this, why not China? I don’t understand this issue
NTT is a de facto Japanese standard body.
Also, I think one has to distinguish between completely unrelated alternative standards (NTSC vs PAL, GSM vs CDMA) or even (EPON vs BPON) and variants of standards that are heavily based on a previously defined standard but with additional features or tweaks.
My understanding is that GPON has evolved over time to incorporate what people liked about both EPON and BPON. Similarly my limited understanding was that the Chinese PON standard essentially did this process one more time and took pieces from EPON and GPON.
Culturally, this behavior seems exactly typical of all the Chinese development today: they are borrowing from everywhere the different pieces they like best. The result is something found no where else, but the antecedents are clear. Probably something related to TTM in there given the speed of advancement.
My non-telecoms example of where I really liked the result is the rest rooms in the Shenzhen convention center. It had all sorts of features I've seen before in either Europe or US but never together.
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