Standards chaos puts competing operators in a spin

Regulators and governments have long been all powerful on wireless issues, dictating which firms get frequencies and what they can do with them. Television broadcasters in one corner, cellular firms in another and never the twain shall meet. The result: electromagnetic chaos.

So when the bold vision of third-generation (3G) wireless was crafted four years ago, operators thought little of being told what technology standard to run with and which frequencies to use.

Admission to the lucrative next-generation mobile market came with two major prerequisites - buy a chunk of dedicated spectrum and sign up to the W-CDMA technology standard, the natural progression from GSM, championed by European handset makers.

But now, this best laid global plan in hi-tech industrial engineering is under assault.

As 3G networks are finally switched on, technology has advanced such that a myriad new applications have sprouted, offering wireless broadband across a range of bandwidths. This may present a headache for operators who paid huge sums for frequencies, but it is also prompting soul searching by regulators. Should they hold back these disruptive technologies to protect 3G incumbents, or relax licence conditions and embrace a new era of ubiquitous bandwidth?

Two areas are proving particularly contentious - whether competing 3G technologies should be free to do battle and emerging wireless applications that can bypass 3G altogether.