Recently the founding members of the Wireless World Research Forum, Alcatel SA, L.M. Ericsson Telephone, Nokia, and Siemens AG, met in Munich to "secure momentum, strategic orientation, and impact for the research on wireless communications beyond 3G," said Martin Haardt, director of international projects and university cooperation at Siemens’ Mobile Infrastructure division.

To an audience of scientists and executives representing industry and academia, research strategists from each of the companies presented their vision of the future.

The following is a sample of what was said, as reported by CNN.

Siemens
Walter KonhŠuser, senior vice president and chief technical officer, believes that the future of wireless lies in the integration of different modes of wireless communications—from indoor networks such as wireless LANS and Bluetooth, to cellular signals, to radio and TV broadcasting, to satellite communications. He would like to see users of mobile devices to be able to roam freely from one standard to another.

Nokia
Tero Ojanperä, vice president for research, standardization and technology, also spoke on the theme of integration by way of Nokia’s work in the development of a wireless LAN card with an integrated Subscriber Identity Module card, which carriers the identity of the user ID information. By combining both, the user’s identity is authenticated when accessing LAN via mobile phone network.

But he cautioned the audience not to lose sight of the present. He advised them to innovate existing systems, "3G and even 2G, in order to make these systems thrive and drive the traffic that will call for 4G applications."

The Wireless World Research Forum was formed last year with the objective to formulate visions on future research direction as well as to identify and promote research areas and technical trends for mobile and wireless technologies.

The Forum is open to all interested parties.