Standards and interoperability for North American mobile data services

The issues and activities associated with the introduction of data services over the evolving mobile communication networks are reviewed. The authors offer a perspective of how the merger of the two fastest growing segments of the market, data communications and mobile communications, presents new technical and standards challenges. These issues are complicated by the recent explosion of contenders for this vast market. Key technical problems arising from the need to interoperate between analog network data devices and the new digital mobile data devices are described together with proposed solutions that are potentially common to all mobile networks. A summary of the different mobile segments and the associated standards activities are presented