ete with each other on the promise of offering efficiency gains and a cost/performance advantage. For example, GSM was justified on the basis of capacity and coverage benefits when compared to ETACS. CDMA and UMTS and HSPA were justified on a similar basis and more recently, LTE has been promoted on the basis of data rate and efficiency gains. In practice, progress in terms of radio and network efficiency tends to be more incremental than market statement or sentiment would imply. Step function gains in efficiency just don't happen in practice. Performance gain is achieved as the result of technology maturation based on engineered optimisation combined with market volume. Making Telecoms Work Similarly, technology can deliver useful gains in terms of reduced component count and component cost, but again these gains are incremental and need to be coupled with engineering effort and market volume to be significant. So, component-cost reductions are a product of technology, engineering effort and market volume. Improvements in access efficiency are a product of technology, engineering effort and market volume. The requirement for market volume implies that economies of scale are dependent on the ability of vendors to ship common products to multiple markets. 21.20 The Impact of IPR on RF Component and Subsystem Costs Similarly, there is a need to have equitable intellectual property agreements in place that provide an economic return on company specific organisationally specific technology-specific research and development investment. This is a troubled area made more troublesome by regional differences in IPR law and accepted good practice. The recent success by CSIRO6 in Australia in pursuing patent rights is relevant. Overall, it would seem to make economic sense to develop effective patent pooling arrangements as part of an integrated international standards making activity, though such a suggestion might be considered over sanguine. 21.21 The Cost of 'Design Dissipation' Resolving intellectual property rights t