The Book of Visions 2001 Visions of the Wireless World

An invitation to participate in the making of the future of wireless communications PREFACE The work on " Visions of the Wireless World " is supported by the European Commission under the IST programme, contract number 1999-12300, the Wireless Strategic Initiative (WSI). The Document " The Book of Visions-Visions of the Wireless World " will be continuously refined over a period of three years, spanning 2000 to 2002. The present version is intended to be the starting point of a process, taking a very first stab at the collection of issues that will in all probability have to be addressed by the R&D community in the years to come. Potential approaches to address the issues are also sketched out. It is assumed that in later versions of the document better precision of the required actions can be proposed. The issues represented in this document are the result of contributions collected in a Think Tank, with leading experts from industry and academia, and from a public " Call for Contributions ". The contributions received from the public call are reprinted in section 3 " Annex " of this document. Please note that the views expressed are the view of the individuals that contributed to the document. Third Generation Systems are currently being rolled out in large scale to world markets. Given the amount of money at stake or already invested, these systems are doomed to succeed on an even larger scale than current second generation mobile telecommunication systems like GSM, DAMPS and PDC. The recipe for success in the market is the detection and satisfaction of fundamental user needs. Second generation systems have succeeded due to their ability to answer demands for mobility of voice, global availability and roaming as well as simple messaging. In essence, third generation mobile technologies address the essential need of being in permanent contact with the Internet and its information, and e-commerce transaction services. It is expected that mobile access will outnumber fixed access to the Internet as early as 2003. As history has shown, mobile systems pass through a paradigm shift roughly in a 10 year cycle. This implies that now is the time to consider the Wireless World of 2010. A few of the essential questions to be answered are: • What will be the fundamental changes that have to take place to make the Wireless World? • How can advances in technologies be …