Achieving the customer's desire, challenges facing designers of future mobile system audio visual services

The challenge for mobile system designers and network operators is to evolve their business from a predominantly voice based service offering to a communications business able to offer higher bandwidth multi-media voice and data services. It is generally accepted that the next generation mobile system, the Universal Mobile telephone System (UMTS) will support the needs of the emerging information society with multi-media as a core capability. A key difference between UMTS and GSM is that service creation rather than services will be specified and the user will be able to personalise these services, creating a Virtual Home Environment (VHE) within which to operate, independent of access system or location. The challenge for mobile network operators and manufacturers is to achieve acceptable quality for these services in the frequently hostile radio and acoustic environments where mobile systems are used, and to determine how early implementations of these services can be developed for existing networks, such as GSM, to stimulate network usage and compliment the future systems, offering ubiquitous coverage for such services in the early stages of UMTS roll-out.