UMA Today Magazine: Home Zone Issue (Spring 2008) Page 36

INTERVIEW

UMA ToDAY

FALL 2007

UMA Today: How important is it to have a
comprehensive range of UMA/GAN devices?

Quant: Early 2007 saw the two device manufacturers,

Samsung and Nokia, enter the market with fairly basic
dual-mode devices. In late 2007, we saw more feature rich
devices coming from these two vendors, as well as a rapidly
increasing range of devices from vendors such as HP, LG,
Sagem and RIM entering the marketplace. It's no surprise
that offerings to UMA/GAN services have raised in line
with this increased choice.

UMA Today: What value do test tools add to
the UMA/GAN ecosystem?

Quant: Test tools are critical in accelerating time-to-

market, reducing development costs and improving the
quality and user experience of new devices/technologies by
providing an repeatable and deterministic environment to
develop new features and benchmark performance.

In today's mobile environment of short product lifecycles,

it is imperative that test tools cover the complete product
lifecycle from early R&D through to device certification and
network acceptance. Test teams require a test system that
supports multiple Wi-Fi access points and a mix of GSM/
EDGE and W-CDMA RF channels, such as setcom's new
S-CAT 6030 test system. Typical UMA/GAN performance
tests are voice analysis and stress testing, handovers both
to and from GERAN and Wi-Fi, authentication and security
algorithms, as well as end-to-end throughput and latency
testing.

Test tools are also a natural choice to perform certification

testing as they are designed to be repetitive, automated and
able to run a large number of complex network emulation
test scenarios, as defined in the case of GAN by the 3GPP
GERAN group. These test cases can also address negative
testing scenarios that are unable to be tested on a live
network.

UMA Today: What value does device
certification bring to the industry?

Quant: The purpose of a certification scheme is to

provide a guarantee of quality, safety and compliance
of products to the ultimate customer. However a good
certification scheme can reap even more benefits.

Operators were quick to realize that certified devices

cause less after-sale headaches and less network issues.
They also create a high level of consumer satisfaction, both
with the vendor's mobile device and the operator's network,
thereby increasing uptake of new features and ARPU while
reducing customer churn.

Device vendors also realized that participating in the

industry-based certification schemes, such as PTCRB
and Global Certification Forum (GCF), reduced the time-
to-market by reducing consuming operating network
acceptance and IOT test scenarios at every major operator.

UMA Today: What is your opinion on the
future of UMA/GAN?

Quant: Building upon the UMA successes of 2007,

operators in 2008 will incorporate W-CDMA into the
UMA/GAN menu, allowing consumers to maintain better
continuity of services between access networks such as rich
multimedia services.

Since operators such as T-Mobile and Orange are

pushing to continue the evolution of UMA/GAN, the 3GPP
is moving ahead with Enhanced GAN (EGAN) which will
further reduce latencies and improve network scalability.

The future of UMA/GAN is looking ever more secure

and successful with continued 3GPP technology standards
development, an increasing device ecosystem and a defined
device certification process, contributing to a long and
bright future.

Bio

Daniel Quant is the strategic product marketing manager for setcom wireless products.
He has worked in telecommunications for more than 15 years with companies such as
British Telecom, Fujitsu and Rascal. Mr. Quant is a well-known face at many of the wireless
industry meetings such as 3GPP, OMA and certification forum.