Nowadays, mobile communication has become a major worldwide business. IS-95 CDMA, etc. Efforts to define a unique worldwide standard result often in a new, extra standard. Furthermore new standards, such as UMTS are a cluster of substandards. The excess of standards is not only troublesome for manufacturers but also for consumers.
Manufacturers have to develop a new telephone for each standard.
This results in extra development costs and small divided markets. It is also disadvantageous for consumers because they cannot use their mobile telephones abroad. A unique common worldwide standard has benefits, but the competition between Asians, Europeans and American industries makes it very difficult. Aside from the standardization issues, one should also view the software radio concept as a means to make users, service providers, and manufacturers more independent of standards. The benefits of this approach are that air interfaces may, in principle, especially be tailored to the specific needs of a particular service for a particular user in a given environment at a given time.