UMTS-a 21st century vision

The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System is a mobile communications technology for a world in which "Personal communication services... will allow person-to-person calling independent of location, the terminal used, the means of transmission and of the choice of technology. Personal communications services will be based on combination of fixed and wireless/mobile services to form a seamless end-to-end service for the user" European Commission objectives are set out. To achieve these objectives will force the development of a technically cohesive, comprehensive and consistent system of personal communications for both fixed and mobile terminals. As a result mobile access networks gain the potential to offer services that have [or might have] traditionally been provided by fixed networks. The European development of UMTS is, therefore, a key part of a policy to integrate personal communications services throughout the Europe Union. Besides exploring a UMTS vision the paper considers the available technology freedoms that may assist in meeting the vision, and outlines some implications for an intelligent fixed network. Most importantly the success of 2nd generation European mobile technology is recognised with some consideration given to managing this success with the development of a 3rd generation UMTS system. The paper suggests that questions of system revolution, evolution or migration are not fundamentally technical problems but issues of European strategic telecommunications policy