Editor’s Note

It has been 25 years since Voice&Data was born. Thank you, everyone, for making this a wonderful journey. We hope to carry this on forward, for many more years.

What can I say about these 25 years! Well, I have fond memories of the Association for Radio and Business Industries (ARIB), Japan, which visited New Delhi, India, in February 1995. At that time, the personal handyphone system or PHS was all the rage in Japan as a cellular technology. If you wish to know more, it is a system operating in the 1880–1930 MHz frequency band, used in Japan, China, Taiwan, and some Asian countries.

Now, along with PHS, came another cellular technology to India, called Groupe Speciale Mobile, or GSM, also in 1994-95. Later, it changed the name to Global System for Mobile Communications. I was able to call my wife, from Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, in early 1995, from a trade show, using a GSM handset provided to me by Nani Narayanan, of Motorola.

I recall an article titled: “Wherever You May Roam”, back in 1996 that listed the beauties involved with roaming. Today, GSM has wonderfully evolved to first, W-CDMA, and then LTE, and now, 5G. In 2000, mobile internet was all the rage, despite statements like “WAP is CRAP” doing the rounds. A new technology, called Bluetooth, also emerged in 2000. I recall a gentleman telling me that it was a useless technology and may not be around for long! Has it, friends?

I also visited Ericsson’s fab in Kista, Sweden, in 1997, where I received my first GSM phone, an Ericsson model. This was followed by a trip to Infineon’s fab in Dresden, Germany, in 2002, to learn more about mobile. I happened to break the news of TD-SCDMA in 2000, and later, visited Siemens in 2002 to have a first look at the handset. There are so many memories. I can go on!

Interestingly, I was sitting in a car in Limousine, France, which had many safety features that we now associate with automotives, back in 2008. A vivid memory is of the car actually asking me to put on my seat belt!

In optical fiber, plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH) was going strong in 1995, and 1996. Subsequently, it got replaced by the synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) technology. There is also the famous SEA-ME-WE, an optical submarine telecom cable linking regions and the longest in the world. Version 3, completed in late 2000, was led by France Telecom and China Telecom, and administered by Singtel. SEA-ME-WE has since evolved and now, we are in the SEA-ME-WE 6.

Today, we are in the era of 5G. There will be connected enterprises in India, as well. High-speed, high-capacity, low-latency 5G broadband networks will meet the demands of data-intensive applications. Release 16 of 5G, from 3GPP, has its freeze date (March 2020) and completion date (June 2020) looming. The TR21.916 will start to expand and fill with useful detail about the main purpose and state of each feature.

pradeepc@cybermedia.co.in