Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[Eric]

IEEE 802.20: The Study Group on Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA)

Rox,

<< The following Working Group officers were elected:

Chair: Jerry Upton, J. Upton Consulting
Procedural Vice Chair: Gang Wu, DoCoMo Labs USA
Liaison Vice Chair: Eshwar Pittampalli, Lucent Technologies.

The election results were not confirmed by the 802 Executive Committee and new elections will be held in July. >>

Interesting developments going on in the (formerly small) 802.20 OFDM Club.

The following article discusses those developments briefly and then SI Regular, Peter Ecclesine (long time voter in 802.11) sheds further light on the subject, relative to what transpired at the March meeting ....

>> 4G Wi-Fi Plans Sabotaged

05/06/03
CommsDay Asia

802.20, a new so-called 4G standard designed to combine the best of mobile and Wi-Fi technologies, may have been killed at birth after interests associated with rival 3G manufacturers took control of the standard's working group.

Development of the 802.20 - the latest in a long line of wireless networking 802 standards from the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) - reportedly ground to a halt after representatives of the 3G sector packed a March IEEE meeting in Texas and voted out previous officeholders.

The 802.20 proposal promises multi-megabit mobility using the OFDM protocol, as opposed to the CDMA and TDMA protocols of 3G that have seen massive ongoing investment.

Prior to March, the IEEE 802.20 Working Group was headed by representatives of 4G developers such as Flarion, Navini and Arraycomm. However, they were voted out of office and replaced by representatives of Lucent, NTT DoCoMo and a former senior Motorola executive.

An executive from Navini accused the new officeholders of staging a "political coup" aimed at suppressing development of the 802.20 technology. Attendance at the meeting was three times as great as the previous meeting, and many of the new attendees represented companies with no direct involvement in OFDM and related technologies.

According to a report in Canada Network World magazine, the IEEE might refuse to accept the results of the election. <<

>> 4G - Wireless Beyond Third Generation

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=19008009

To:Eric L. who wrote (371)
From: Peter Ecclesine Friday, Jun 6, 2003 12:41 AM
Respond to 374 of 379

Hi Eric L.,

What happened was the 802.20 Task Group met all week in March IEEE, and people got voting rights by attending eight 2-hour sessions over four days. The 802.16e people changed their sessions so they could also attain voting rights in 802.20. When 802.20 voted on Officers Thursday evening, they found 184 people had attained voting rights, and the people running the 802.20 Study Group (Flarion/Arraycom) were defeated by a combination of interests including 3G and 802.16 people. On that Friday, the 802 exec refused to certify the ballot results and named 802 vice-chair Geoff Thompson to run .20 through the week of July 20th.

802.11/15/16/18/19/20 held a May interim meeting in Dallas, and the .20 sessions were run by the Study Group officers.

Undoubtedly the situation will be sorted during the July meeting, and the .20 voters appear evenly split.

petere (voter in 802.11 since 1997) <<

Jerry Upton's appeal and a response to him are here:

http://www.ieee802.org/secmail/pdf00134.pdf

Jerry is a former Vice President of Standards at Motorola, founding Chairman of the Open Mobile Alliance, and past Chairman of the WAP Forum.

- Eric -