Beyond 3G: The Manuscript is Ready

Some of you might have noticed that recent blog entries haven grown in size again and speculated that I have a bit more time at hand again. Well you have guessed right. Over the past months, I spent most of my free time working on my next book, to be published by John Wiley and Sons by the end of the year. Finally, the manuscript is ready and the title will be

"Beyond 3G: Bringing Networks, Terminals and the Web Together"

For the moment, people at Wiley's are now working on the cover, they are proof-reading the manuscript, and typesetting is starting soon. After that, I'll have to work a bit on the index, on the glossary, etc., etc. But that's a bit later in the year. I always find it amazing how many steps are necessary from finalizing the manuscript to having the finished book finally being shipped to the bookstores.

It's a long process. However, I strongly feel that all of this work is necessary and justified to produce something outstanding that has something which is missing in day to day online publishing: Depth and broadness.

That doesn't mean that online sources are less valuable, they are just different. I very much like my blog for example, because it catches spontaneous thoughts, thoughts about a clearly defined single topics, ideas, it's great for posting the latest news, for responding to someone else publishing something, and it is thus a great complement to my offline writing activities. Together, online and offline are hard to beat!

So what exactly will the book be about? Here's the current version of the back cover text:

Giving a sound technical introduction to 3GPP LTE and SAE, this book explains the decisions taken during standardization while also examining the likely competition for LTE such as HSPA+ and WiMAX. As well as looking at next generation network technologies, Beyond 3G – Bringing Networks, Terminals and the Web Together describes the latest mobile device developments, voice and multimedia services and the mobile web 2.0. It considers not only how the systems, devices and software work but also the reasons behind why they are designed in this particular way. How these elements strongly influence each other is discussed as well as how network capabilities, available bandwidth, mobile device capabilities and new application concepts will shape the way we communicate in the future.

• Examines current and next-generation network technologies such as UMTS, HSPA+, WiMAX, LTE and Wifi
• Analyses and explains performance and capacity in practice as well as future capacity requirements and how they can be fulfilled.
• Introduces the reader to the current cellular telephony architecture and to voice over IP architectures such as SIP, IMS and TISPAN
• Looks at mobile device hardware and mobile operating system evolution
• Encompasses all major global wireless standards for application development and the latest state of the mobile web 2.0

As I said above, it's going to take until the end of the year until the book is finally shipped. If you would like to be informed when it's available, please send an eMail to "gsmumts at gmx.de", I'll be happy to keep you informed.