ologies, this book offers a window towards what the future has in store for us. In this book, Ajay R Mishra and his colleagues have put in their years of experience, ranging from the R&D labs to actual network planning in the field across all six continents, on paper for the benefit of professionals in the mobile industry. One hundred years ago, railways and roads were built in order to connect cities. The Internet is connecting computers and machines. The Mobile Revolution is now connecting the world - connecting people and their lives. Bosco Novak Senior Vice President and General Manager Nokia Networks Dusseldorf, Germany On the Crossroads of History The mobile telecommunications industry has reached an important crossroads in its development: one road leads to a maturing 2G voice-centric end user industry, while the other offers incredible possibilities for end users to enjoy a variety of data-centric 3G services on top of the conventional voice services. The profitability of the industry is at reasonably high levels, although the industry still suffers from infrastructure overcapacity, which arguably leads to aggressive price reductions as mobile operators fight for market share. The recent strong growth in 2G mobile subscribers, in emerging markets in particular, resulted in the expected passing of the 2 billion benchmark in mobile subscriptions during the year 2005. The long-awaited issuance of 3G licenses in China and the start of 3G roll-outs in the US should take place during 2006. In Western Europe, where 3G services have been launched commercially, subscriber adoption has remained below previous forecasts, despite the coverage build-outs in urban areas. It is believed that data offers - not only to offset declining voice ARPUs (annual revenues per user) - substantial additional revenue opportunities for mobile operators. The current data revenues account for 16 per cent of ARPU. Moving to higher data speed technologies, such as WCDMA/HSDPA and CDMA 1X/EV-DO, which are specifically designed for higher 