ASIAN TECHNOLOGY Singapore Telecom Unit Mulls PCN Phones Without Networks
May 09, 2011
LIFE IS FULL of uncertainties, but there are a few things you can count on: what's up is downward bound, the free lunch is fiction and if you buy a PCN mobile phone you're stuck with using PCN networks. Or are you? In the past few weeks, executives at Singapore Telecommunications' MobileLink unit have been talking about offering a service that would enable customers on its Personal Communications Network to use their phones while traveling in countries where there is no PCN network, but rather networks using the Global System for Mobile communications, or GSM, standard. Though it would seem to shatter the laws of physics, this would be a good thing for PCN users with wanderlust: SingTel has GSM roaming agreements in 37 countries; PCN's relatively limited spread means MobileLink's PCN customers can only use their phones in Malaysia and Thailand. The difference between the two systems, in a nutshell, is that PCN is broadcast at 1,800 megahertz, and GSM is broadcast at 900 Mhz. In Singapore and in Hong Kong, where PCN is being introduced under the name Personal Communications System, the 1,800-Mhz networks actually use the same method to render conversations as digital 1s and 0s on the airwaves as GSM does at 900 Mhz. But getting a network on one frequency to recognize conversations on a handset using the other frequency is like going to a sushi bar to order spare ribs. Has MobileLink discovered a way to turn water into wine? Nothing of the sort, says Lindsey Roux, MobileLink's manager for roaming. One way the company could perform this apparent miracle, she says, is to hand out GSM handsets to PCN customers heading overseas. They could then pop the SIM card that identifies them and their home network into the GSM phone and carry on. The SIM card doesn't care what kind of standard the phone is on, she says. The other way is to simply start accepting customers with handsets that operate on both GSM and PCN, a property known as dual-mode. ``We haven't decided yet,'' says Ms. Roux of the alternatives. These GSM/PCN dual-mode handsets don't exist yet, but they will. Other types of dual-mode handsets have already become a popular way for cellular network operators to adopt newer network standards without having to duplicate network coverage. So, for instance, networks trying to upgrade from older analog technology to more cost-effective digital networks can sell users handsets that operate on either analog or digital. There are phones that understand analog and GSM, analog and D-AMPS and analog and Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA. Companies in Japan are also developing phones that can operate on the country's unique digital standard and its higher-frequency system, Personal Handyphone System, or PHS. It makes sense for cellular-equipment makers to design handsets that make it easier to convert customers to newer systems, but there are rivalries in the cellular world that mean there will probably never be a universal cellular phone. For example, don't hold your breath for a phone that operates on both GSM and CDMA networks. Qualcomm of the U.S., CDMA's main cheerleader, and its licensees compete with GSM's European adherents for network-equipment contracts. The closest thing to global mobile coverage now in the works is a handset that toggles between a cellular standard such as GSM and satellite-based networks. SingTel, for example, has invested in a venture with the International Mobile Satellite Organization, or Inmarsat, called I-CO Global Communications that aims by 2014 to blanket the earth with mobile-phone coverage using 12 satellites orbiting at 10,000 kilometers. Customers on the network would carry handsets that could use cellular networks where available, then cast their radio gaze skywards when out of range of a friendly network's terrestrial base stations. Laird says it's too soon to start talking about a GSM/satellite roaming service in Singapore. In the meantime, customers weary of wading through cellular acronyms have to hope for more dual-mode handset combinations like GSM/PCN. The wait may soon be over. Ericsson product manager Sisco Claypool in Singapore says the company will start testing a GSM/PCN phone next year.
