Is Wireless LAN a threat or blessing to 3G?

Wireless Panel, 5:20-7:00pm, October 1, 2003

Popularity of wireless LAN (WLAN) technology has skyrocketed in the recent years. To the horror of many would-be 3G operators, WLAN has proved to be an affordable, fast, permanently-connected wireless IP access technology, one that requires no licensing of spectrum whatsoever. Some say that WLAN is a potential threat to 3G. It will be eating away directly at the 3G revenue which operators need so gravely to pay off the huge upfront fees in spectrum licensing. Others argue that WLAN does not have it all, no decent voice calls, and no wide area coverage. For these reasons, WLAN and 3G will end up in a symbiotic relationship. The panel will discuss the threats and blessings that WLAN can bring to 3G in the path to future pervasive and ubiquitous networking.

Panel Organisers: Mahbub Hassan and Aruna Seneviratne
Moderator: Mahbub Hassan

Panel Members

Jan Holler, Manager of IP Mobility Research Lab, Ericsson Research (Stockholm)

10-minute Speech (5:20-5:30pm) - "Interworking between 3G and WLAN: Towards being Always Best Connected "

Jan Holler Jan Holler is manager of the IP Mobility research lab at Ericsson Research in Stockholm, Sweden. After joining Ericsson in 1989, his background has been mainly in multiservice networking, where he also specialized in Voice over Packet technologies. Current activities include multiaccess aspects from a mobility perspective, network layer mobility management as well as higher layer mobility support. In particular, his research interests include mobility and adaptivity in heterogeneous environments as well as mobility aware middleware.

Rhett Sampson, Founder of Xone Inc.

10-minute Speech (5:30-5:40pm) -"Commercialisation issues in wifi: show me the money"

Rhett Sampson Rhett is a telecommunications management consultant, business adviser and business developer. He has built several telco businesses from scratch, including Transglobal Exchange, an international facilities based telephony wholesaler, and Xone, a wireless Internet service provider. Rhett is a strong advocate for developing telecommunications technologies and businesses in Australia. As well as actually doing it, he has been actively involved with Atug, contributed to the Parliamentary inquiry on broadband wireless and is a founding committee member of the Warren Centre Wireless Forum. He holds a degree in electrical engineering from the University of New South Wales.

David Skellern, Director of Cisco Wireless Networking Business Unit

David Skellern David Skellern is currently the Technology Director for Cisco's Wireless Networking Business Unit. He has been a consultant for leading companies in the US, Europe, and Japan on the development of multiservice and broadband communications networks. He held a senior staff faculty position at Hewlett Packard Laboratories from 1993 to 1999. In 1989, Dr. Skellern joined Macquarie University as Professor of Electronics. While at Macquarie University, he worked to develop the core technologies that led to the formation of Radiata Communications Pty Ltd., in 1997. From 1974-1989 he worked at The University of Sydney, for nine years as a research engineer with the Fleurs Radio Telescope then as an academic in the School of Electrical Engineering. He received the B.Sc. (1972), B.E. (1974) and Ph.D. (1985) degrees from the University of Sydney.

Hesham Soliman, Flarion Technologies

Hesham Soliman Hesham Soliman is a member of the Advanced Networking group at Flarion Technologies. His current responsibilities include developing solutions for mobility management and peer to peer communication in Flarion's Flash OFDM cellular system. He is a technical program committee member of the First IEEE symposium on IP mobility, IPCN conference and a member of the IPv6 Technical Directorate in the IPv6 forum. He is a key contributor to the development of Mobile IPv6 and other related specifications in IETF. Prior to his current position, he was a Senior Specialist at Ericsson research in Stockholm, where he led research and standardisation activities specialising in mobility management, IPv6 and network mobility.

Alan Young, Manager of Wireless and Mobile systems, CSIRO

Alan Young Alan Young currently manages the CSIRO research work in wireless systems including precise location systems, mm-wave system applications, through-rock communications to and from miners, cellular system modelling and the use of MIMO for enhanced Wireless LAN performance. In the early 1990s this wireless program developed the technology underpinning the 802.11a WLAN and the Radiata success. During that period, Alan also led research with a commercial partner to develop specialised GaAs MMICs for next generation microwave radio links . In earlier work with CSIRO from 1984 to 1990, Alan led the development of microwave local oscillators and optical fibre transfer for the major new "Australia Telescope" project . As part of this, his team built a 25 link, gigabit optical fibre system for the new radiotelescope when fibre was still in its infancy. His early PhD work developed improved ILS and VOR aircraft navigation aids. This was followed by a period in the radio astronomy instrumentation group at the California Institute of Technology where he developed a wideband Correlator for the new millimetre-wave array at Owens Valley, California. He received the BSc degree from the University of New South Wales in 1971 and the PhD degree from the University of Sydney in 1982.