3G comes to China

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play a key role in the daily activities of many people in China. The mobile telephone is a highly successful device that corresponds to a deep human communication urge. Available and coming applications and services promise a world where ICT resources improve further the quality of life of the individual and the society in which they live.

Chinese consumers will soon have access to mobile telephones that use a 3G standard (both home-grown and international). It is therefore essential to the rapid uptake of services and devices that China learn from the lessons of other markets and observes international standards.

This article focuses on the ETSI Human Factors Group, which aims to provide basic design guidelines for 3G mobile devices and services.

In Europe, the United States and nearby Asian countries, third generation cellular networks are rapidly becoming available for masses of people in a high variety of cultures and regions. Also the penetration of 3G terminal services is increasing accordingly. According to ITU-T 3G definition, 3G mobile telephones need to support:

High bit rates and wideband connections;

Services that require fixed bit rate and services that need to allow variations in the bit rate;

Fluent transition between operator networks (GSM, WiFi and 3G) and countries (roaming);

Geographical positioning of the terminal;

Interactive multimedia services.

What is ETSI Human Factors and how can it help 3G services in China?

The Human Factors working group of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute is responsible for developing common user interface design guidelines for the design and development of ICT systems. The 3G User Interface Guidelines project is led by representatives from Nokia, the Swiss Telecoms Institute and Asentio Design

ETSI Human Factors develops EG (ETSI Guides) to help designers and application developers produce more consistent and usable user interfaces. The guidelines are not intended to stifle innovation, rather they provide a basis for common design principles that can be followed by all interested parties. Differentiation of services and products should take place at the level of service and device function.

Without such guidelines, users must relearn each time they change device.

The work is aligned with and sponsored by the European Commission's initiative eEurope, a program for the inclusive deployment of new, important, consumer-oriented technologies, and to open up global access to communications and other new technologies, for all, see

The eEurope 2005 Action plan, following on from the eEurope 2002 initiative, aims to provide a favorable environment for the creation and uptake of new services and new jobs, to boost productivity, to modernize public services and to give everyone the opportunity to participate in the global information society. Thereby, the most competitive and dynamic economy in the world, exploiting the opportunities of the new economy and technologies, can be created. However, this will only happen if people have confidence in the commercial and public services offered to them electronically.

Though focused on European users, ETSI Human Factors takes a global view of developing ICT user experiences and has published widely in Asian conferences in Malaysia, China, Taiwan and Japan.
What are the challenges for users of 3G systems?

3G terminals are often characterized by a large color screen, a variety of input solutions (ITU-T/qwerty/touch user interfaces) and sufficient processing power and memory capabilities to perform basic and advanced computing and connectivity tasks, i.e. high interaction performance in small and compact form factor. Simultaneously, global competition and increasing availability is bringing the price of such terminals down.
Full Internet use is now no longer limited to desks, homes and offices. Overall, developments in technology, terminals, services and the market are bringing advanced communication devices with good Internet connectivity to existing mobile terminal customers and to new user groups and populations. The availability of commercial and non-commercial services is rapidly expanding thanks to open sourced developer communities.

Like the evolution of technology, the mobile phone industry is unusual since it relies on telecom operator companies such as China Mobile. The evolution of operator policies will therefore have a great impact on 3G user experiences and service adoption.

On one hand, if the 3G environment globally develops to the direction of flat fee rates, well-implemented roaming solutions and minor limitations on the available data rates, users can enjoy the benefits of 3G in full scale and new services will be rapidly developed. In this case, ETSI guidelines can help in optimizing the user interfaces to support wide global practical adoption of the services

On the other hand, it is also possible that users will have to worry about the cost of using services (and hence need more informative user interfaces to control the device connectivity status), and they may experience difficulties in getting services to work in home networks and abroad.

The ETSI Human Factors group relies on active consultation with the world's leading mobile operators to ensure that design guidelines also take the special requirements of operators into consideration, especially those related to pricing and service roaming issues.