European R&D activities in mobile multimedia communications and expectations on future services

Mobile telecommunication is a rapidly growing market. Second generation systems such as GSM, DECT and ERMES, which are actually in an evolving status will be replaced by the third generation UMTS from the beginning of the next century on. While UMTS will allow data communication with up to 2 Mbit/s, the fourth generation system MBS will provide up to 155 Mbit/s. In several European R&D projects of the ESPRIT, DRIVE, COST and RACE programmes investigations concerning network planning, network operation, signalling, access techniques, security, terminal development and image and voice compression are carried out in order to create the scientific and technological bases for future UMTS and MBS. Some of these projects are described in more detail and an outlook toward future R&D activities is given. Finally some considerations are made concerning expectations of future services and questions concerning the development of wide-band versus narrow-band solutions are put.