Milestone-Proposal talk:Commercialization of CDMA Cellular Communication System

Advocates’ Checklist

1. Is proposal for an achievement rather than for a person?
2. Was proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature?
4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
5. Is proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the advocate. If the advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
7. Is proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
8. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements? Is the address complete? Are the GPS coordinates correct and in decimal format?
9. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
10. Scientific and technical units correct? (e.g. km, mm, hertz, etc.) Are acronyms correct and properly upperercased or lowercased?
11. Date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Helpful_Hints_on_Citations,_Plaque_Locations

Reviewers’ Checklist

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?

Original Title and Plaque Citation as Submitted

Commercialization of CDMA Cellular Communication Systems, 1996

In 1996, South Korea pioneered the world’s first successful CDMA commercial service, validating large-scale deployment of a digital technology with superior performance over analog mobile networks. Accomplishments of SK Telecom, ETRI, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Electronics in developing equipment for this system led to many mobile operators around the world adopting CDMA and South Korea becoming a global leader in the telecom and high-tech industry.

Submission and Review Log

7 August 2023 -- Proposal submitted; 28 August 2023 -- Advocate approval of proposal. 29 November 2023 -- History Committee approval.

Expert Review 1 of Dr Stephen B. Weinstein (IEEE Life Fellow, Past President of IEEE Communications Society) placed by Janina -- JaninA (talk) 20:05, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

COMMENTS ON PROPOSED IEEE MILESTONE, ”Commercialization of CDMA Cellular Communication Systems, 1996”

The massive scale commercial deployment of IS-95 CDMA, made in Korea in 1996 as described in this Proposal, is worthy of recognition as an IEEE Milestone. This was an important industrial/operational achievement that helped convince the worldwide cellular mobile industry that CDMA was a viable contender as a cellular mobile standard. The Proposal provides interesting historical background on the resolution of several technical problems, such as AMPS/CDMA interworking, that Korean industry solved to make the deployment successful.

This proposed milestone recognizes a major development effort by Korean industry and the first substantial national deployment of a CDMA cellular system. It should not be interpreted as claiming the first experimental development of CDMA (for which there is already an IEEE Milestone [1]), the first field trial of CDMA, or even the first commercial deployment of CDMA, which sources such as [2] attribute to Hutchison Telecom in Hong Kong in December, 1995. The Proposal notes on page 6 that the Hutchison deployment was small and the Proposal’s reference 19 confirms this and further notes that the Hong Kong authorities declined in 2004 to renew Hutchinson’s license. Perhaps, in the interest of honesty and clarity, the Proposal could state, much earlier in the text, that the very large and successful CDMA commercial deployment in Korea began one month after initiation of a very small and unsuccessful CDMA deployment in Hong Kong. The title of the proposed milestone could possibly be modified to something like “Large-Scale Commercialization of a CDMA Cellular Communication System, 1996.”

The authors might consider clarifying the relationship of CDMA, an important contribution to the cellular mobile industry, to the competing TDMA digital cellular systems that eventually captured most of the markets, and the future of CDMA in 5G and 6G. Further, I suggest that sources (e.g., a URL where the referenced document can be found) be provided for those references that don’t already show a source.

In summary, the Proposal describes a remarkable academic-industrial-government cooperative effort along the route to the near-universal deployment of cellular mobile that we have today, and this achievement deserves to be recognized with an IEEE Milestone.

References

[1] https://ethw.org/Milestones:Development_of_CDMA_for_Cellular_Communications,_1989 [2] http://www.cdg.org/resources/cdma_history.asp

Comments submitted Aug. 21, 2023 by Stephen Weinstein, sbw500@gmail.com

Expert Review 2 by Dr Ed Tiedemann (IEEE Life Fellow and Qualcomm Senior Vice President) placed by Janina -- JaninA (talk) 05:53, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

<small>Insert non-formatted text here</small><small>Small text</small>Expert Review 2 by Dr Edward G. Tiedemann, Jr. (IEEE Life Fellow, Recipient of IEEE Communications Society 2019 Robert M. Walp Industry Humanitarian Award, and currently IEEE Communications Society Director, Standards Development) As background, I am Senior Vice-President at Qualcomm. I’m also an IEEE and Qualcomm Fellow. I joined Qualcomm in 1988 and was heavily involved in the original design of CDMA. I started Qualcomm’s standardization activities, and led the efforts to create the IS-95 CDMA standard. I should note that I still am responsible for Qualcomm’s work in standards and industry organizations, though the scope has expanded considerably as Qualcomm has grown over the years. As one of the senior system engineers in the early days of CDMA, I do have the background to comment on Korea’s Milestone application.

Korea does deserve recognition for its achievements relative to CDMA and its part in the cellular industry. Its bold and risky move to develop CDMA, versus one of the other cellular technologies (North American TDMA or GSM), really helped to propel Korean companies into the world’s largest handset manufacturers and also an important infrastructure manufacturer. To some extent, it also helped to propel Korea’s entire electronics industry forward. I believe that it also was key in making Korea the #1 patent generating country on a per capita basis of any country in the world. Two Korean companies are among the top ten contributors of technology to 3GPP, the organization responsible for developing cellular specifications. Samsung is typically among the top five contributing companies.

On January 1, 1996. Korea Mobile Telecommunications (KMT), now SK Telecom, went commercial with LGIC infrastructure. On April 1, 1996, Shinsegi, a second Korean operator announced commercial service, again with Korean designed and manufacturer infrastructure. Also on that date, KMT expanded its service from the first two cities (Incheon and Bucheon) that went commercial to Seoul—where the majority of Korea’s population lives. That was a major step forward for Korea—where Korea was not only able to deploy the new technology of CDMA and did it by developing their own infrastructure equipment, versus using infrastructure equipment from one of the established vendors at the time. There has been some discussion on which was the first commercial CDMA service—the Hong Kong or Korean system. It is fair to say that through the efforts of the Korean vendors and operators, the Korean systems rapidly became a very well performing with very good coverage (for example, there was good coverage in many of the underground tunnels between buildings in Seoul). Thus, it is fair to say that Korea had the first large scale well-performing CDMA deployment. The appearance of Korean made handsets on the market gave a considerable boost to CDMA, not only in Korea but particularly worldwide. In 1996, the only other handsets that were available came from Qualcomm, which had limited production capacity. The writeup by proponents is quite detailed and shows that they did a considerable amount of research in developing it. It sufficiently corresponds to my recollections of events at the time, and what I have been able to verify through my own resources and public resources on the web. However, I do find that it is not giving as much credit to the role of Qualcomm in proving the original CDMA system, in hosting teams from ETRI at its facility in San Diego to learn CDMA, and in using Qualcomm ASICs in its handsets and infrastructure. Nevertheless, this does not take away from the tremendous achievement of Korea in building upon the work of Qualcomm to design, manufacture, and deploy CDMA infrastructure and handsets and to move the country into one of the premier deployers of cellular systems in the world and one of the largest suppliers of cellular equipment in the world.

In terms of the citation, I would suggest the following changes show as revision marks: “In 1996, South Korea pioneered inaugurated the world’s first successful CDMA commercial cellular service, validating large-scale deployment of a digital technology with superior performance over analog mobile networks. Accomplishments of SK Telecom, ETRI, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Electronics in developing equipment for this system led to many mobile operators around the world adopting CDMA and South Korea becoming a global leader in the telecom and high-tech industry.” I am quite aware of the SKT Tower in central Seoul, having visited it many times. It is a good place for the plaque and will be visible by many people.

All-in-all, I would strongly support this application for an IEEE Milestone,

Advocate Approval by Janina Mazierska -- JaninA (talk) 14:32, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

'Bold text'Two positive Expert Reviews have been obtained for this Milestone nomination.

Hence, I approve the proposal 2022-18 in my capacity of an advocate.

I am expecting two more reviews, and they will be placed here accordingly. One of them, also positive, has already been submitted, although in a sort of informal way, as an email to a History Committee member, who was assisting me in finding and approaching possible experts for this topic.

Expert Review 3 by Prof Fumiyuki Adachi (IEEE Fellow) placed by Janina. A file contains the proposal with additions has eebn emailed to the proposer. -- JaninA (talk) 20:05, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Dear Dr. Janina Mazierska-san,

I have gone through the proposal. Below is my response to your inquiries.

1) Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?

The wording of the Plaque Citation is accurate. The success of commercial CDMA system in Korea as the second generation (i.e., 2G) mobile communication system convinced many wireless researchers and engineers that the CDMA technology could work in a real propagation environment and that the CDMA technology could be a strong candidate for next generation (i.e., 3G) mobile communication system offering broadband mobile communication services, which later led to the development of WCDMA technology for 3G mobile communication system.

2) Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation?

In section "What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?", various efforts taken to solve the problems caused by obstacles are described. However, it would be better if more emphasis could be placed on the technical efforts made to overcome the obstacles. I have added my comments to the WORD file of the proposal which is attached to this email. I hope my comments will help refine the proposal.

3) Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?

As I stated in the response to inquiry 1), I believe that the success of commercial CDMA system in Korea as 2G mobile communication system later led to the development of WCDMA technology for 3G mobile communication system. However, as I stated in the response to inquiry 2), it is not fully explained what key technologies were developed to make CDMA a successful 2G system. It would be better if more emphasis could be placed on the technical efforts made to overcome the obstacles towards the success of CDMA as 2G system.

Best regards, Fumiyuki Adachi

Expert Review 4 by Dr Jonathan Wells (President of AJIS Wireless Consulting) placed as excerpts from emails by Janina -- JaninA (talk) 20:26, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

On Thu, 24 Aug 2023, 15:59 Jonathan Wells, <jonathan@ajisconsulting.com> wrote:

Hi Janina,

I’ve reviewed the early submissions and provided feedback and suggestions. I’ve also reviewed the most recent proposal, and agree these insights have been addressed and the proposal is in good shape.

As I confirmed to Brian, I believe the three questions asked appear to be satisfactorily addressed.

From: Jonathan Wells <jonathan@ajisconsulting.com> Date: Thursday, 31 August 2023 at 18:20 To: 'Janina Mazierska' <janina.mazierska@gmail.com> Cc: 'Brian Berg' <brianberg@gmail.com>, 'Robert Colburn' <r.colburn@ieee.org> Subject: RE: 2022-18: Invitation for Expert Review for "Commercialization of CDMA Cellular Communication Systems, 1996" Hi Janina,

I looked again at the online milestone proposal (https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Milestone-Proposal:Commercialization_of_CDMA_Cellular_Communication_System) and saw the proposed citation has been updated from the one you previously sent me. I thought I should provide feedback on this newer (and much better) citation

The citation is currently listed on-line as follows: In 1996, South Korea inaugurated the world’s first successful CDMA commercial service, validating large-scale deployment of a digital technology with superior performance over analog mobile networks. Accomplishments of SK Telecom, ETRI, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Electronics in developing equipment for this system led to many mobile operators around the world adopting CDMA and South Korea becoming a global leader in the telecom and high-tech industry.

I think this is good, except for the very end of the last sentence: “[CDMA commercialization led to] South Korea becoming a global leader in the telecom and high-tech industry.” This seems to be more marketing fluff than fact. The milestone is about the achievement of S. Korea commercializing the world’s first CDMA network in 1996. The application provides no demonstratable support that this achievement led to S. Korea becoming a world-wide leader in telecom or high tech.

I would suggest the citation be modified to show that S. Korea’s achievement was noteworthy because they were the first to commercialize a technology where the technology became the basis for future world-wide adoption. For example: In 1996, South Korea inaugurated the world’s first successful CDMA commercial service, validating large-scale deployment of a digital technology with superior performance over analog mobile networks. Accomplishments of SK Telecom, ETRI, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Electronics in developing equipment for this system led to many mobile operators around the world adopting CDMA, and the technology becoming the basis of the worldwide, third-generation of mobile communications.

Jonathan

Jonathan Wells, Ph.D. M.B.A. President, AJIS Consulting Wireless Technology Consulting

Mob: +1.925.200.5124 Email: jonathan@ajisconsulting.com Web: www.ajisconsulting.com/wireless LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanwells

Acceptance of proposed Citation by Nominators - Comment by Janina -- JaninA (talk) 20:29, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

The nominator has already accepted the proposed citation byDr Wells as can be seen on ETHW.

a new Citation proposed by Expert 2 Ed Tiedemann placed by Janina (bolded) -- JaninA (talk) 20:36, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

From: Ed Tiedemann <etied@qti.qualcomm.com> Date: Monday, 4 September 2023 at 16:14 To: Brian Berg <brianberg@gmail.com> Cc: Janina Mazierska <janina.mazierska@gmail.com>, Kathy Hayashi <kathyh@ieee.org>, Robert Colburn <r.colburn@ieee.org> Subject: RE: Invitation from IEEE History Committee to write an expert opinion on IEEE Milestone proposal "Commercialization of CDMA Cellular Communication Systems, 1996 (2022-18) Brian,

I believe that it is fair to say that South Korea has become “a global leader” in telecom and high tech. In particular, they became the leader in handsets for cellular. They are also the largest producing country for DRAMs. In terms of dollar amounts, Samsung has the second largest revenue (shy of Apple) of electronics in the world. Two of the top 10 electronics companies (in terms of revenue) are in Korea (Samsung and LG). If the citation were to say “the global leader”, that would be incorrect. Today, a least in cellular, the five most significant contributors to enhancing cellular standards are: Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Qualcomm, and Samsung. If we look at countries/regions, we have Ericsson and Nokia—Europe, Huawei—China, Qualcomm—US, and Samsung—Korea. From around 2000 to around 2014 or so, Korea seem to be the most innovative country in the world in terms of cellular—they were trying out all sorts of new things. From a Qualcomm perspective, they were often the first country to deploy what we developed. During this period, they eclipsed the Japanese handset industy.

My main concern with the citation

In 1996, South Korea inaugurated the world’s first successful CDMA commercial service, validating large-scale deployment of a digital technology with superior performance over analog mobile networks. Accomplishments of SK Telecom, ETRI, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Electronics in developing equipment for this second-generation system led to many mobile operators around the world adopting CDMA, and the technology becoming the basis of the worldwide, third-generation of mobile communications.

comes from the phrases: in developing equipment system led to many mobile operators around the world adopting CDMA

and led to ….. the technology becoming the basis of the worldwide, third-generation of mobile communications.

It is not wrong as written, but slightly misleading. Major mobile operators in 1996 didn’t really care about Korean infrastructure—they were too unproven for most operators to take a risk on. They did care about Korean cell phones (handsets) and the handset business became a big Korean success story. The second aspect is that it is a little hard to say that Korea’s deployment of CDMA in 1996 directly led to CDMA becoming the basis of the worldwide, third-generation mobile communications. As background, there were two third-generation systems widely deployed, cdma2000, an enhancement of CDMA which Korea deployed in 1996, and WCDMA, which was a different design but used the principles of CDMA. I would soften this a bit.

Thus, I would have written it more like:

In 1996, South Korea inaugurated the world’s first successful CDMA commercial service, validating large-scale deployment of a digital technology with superior performance over analog mobile networks. Accomplishments of SK Telecom, ETRI, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Electronics in developing equipment, particularly handsets, for this second-generation system led to many mobile operators around the world adopting CDMA, and contributed to the technology becoming the basis of the worldwide, third-generation of mobile communications.

Approval of current citation by Expert Ed Tiedemann placed by the Advocate (Janina Mazierska) -- JaninA (talk) 06:45, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

From: Ed Tiedemann <etied@qti.qualcomm.com> Date: Thursday, 7 September 2023 at 20:46 To: Brian Berg <brianberg@gmail.com> Cc: Janina Mazierska <janina.mazierska@gmail.com>, Jonathan Wells <jonathan@ajisconsulting.com>, Robert Colburn <r.colburn@ieee.org> Subject: RE: 2022-18: Invitation for Expert Review for "Commercialization of CDMA Cellular Communication Systems, 1996" Brian,

There are several possible fixes for the word limit issue, including: In 1996, South Korea inaugurated the world’s first successful CDMA commercial service, validating large-scale deployment of a digital technology with superior performance over analog mobile networks. Accomplishments of SK Telecom, ETRI, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Electronics in developing equipment, particularly handsets, for this second-generation system led to many mobile operators around the world adopting CDMA, and contributed to the technology becoming the basis of the worldwide, third-generation of mobile communications.

........................ However, I suggest that you might ask the proponents in Korea.

Best,

-- Ed --

Summary: approval of Citation by all Experts -- JaninA (talk) 06:50, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

We obtained four very supportive reviews of this proposal from top experts in the field, see all entries on the discussion page. Also, all experts are happy with the Citation as given in the current proposal on the ETHW, also see above citation proposals and compare it with the proposal.

Kind regfards

Janina

Approval of Citation listed -- Hyemin kim (talk) 01:05, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

The nominators approved the citation as listed, as per the request of the Milestone Administrator.

revisions to citation suggested -- Amy Bix (talk) 22:17, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

good milestone proposal! But I find the current citation too long and clunky. May I recommend something such as:

In 1996, South Korea inaugurated the world’s first successful CDMA commercial service, deploying digital technologies that performed better than analog mobile networks. SK Telecom, ETRI, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Electronics developed equipment for this second-generation system. CDMA's superior capacity and call quality made it the basis for worldwide, third-generation mobile communications.

should CDMA be spelled out the first time it is used?

Re: revisions to citation suggested -- Bberg (talk) 23:12, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this proposed change, Amy. I have been working on edits to this citation for awhile now, separate from what is recorded on this Comments page. However, please note that some essential history is not included in your proposed version. Most importantly, the latter portion of the proposer's first sentence includes "validating large-scale deployment" as opposed to your "deploying." Also, please note that point is included in the title itself with the wording "Large-Scale Commercialization." As such, a change to this phrasing would actually remove the most important aspect of this entire Milestone proposal.

Please note that the background sections of the proposal discuss this topic at great length, and indeed the success of this deployment thoughout all of South Korea was a major accomplishment - and amazingly, this was achieved in less than one year. As success on this scale gave suppliers in South Korea, and then throughout the world, the confidence in funding CDMA, this was a dramtic step forward for digital over analog. This fact is underscored in the proposer's second sentence, but this point is not included in the proposed changes to latter part of the citation.

As such, as I know what it took to get to the current citation wording, I encourage that its wording remain unchanged.

Re: spelling out what CDMA stands for, that is an excellent suggestion. This should be addressed with an expansion of the title to "Large-Scale Commercialization of a Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA) Cellular Communication System, 1996."