MANHASSET, N.Y. - A trio of cell phone giants this week announced plans to define universal specifications for mobile instant-messaging services. Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia said their Wireless Village initiative will craft standards by the end of the year on exchanging information to enable mobile chat rooms and other services over wireless networks.

The move comes at a time of rising concern about bottlenecks in cellular networks that could hinder such wireless data communications. Indeed, at least two companies - Mspect and Schema - have rolled out technologies to help unclog and manage the second-generation (2G) networks now in place as carriers press forward with getting their third-generation (3G) nets up and running.

"Certain carriers might well be employing the likes of Mspect and Schema [technologies] to maximize the 2G equipment so they can save for 3G deployment," said Jim Moeller, wireless analyst at Dain Rauscher Wessels.

The Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia joint effort was prompted by the lack of a single, common interoperable solution that would allow operators to satisfy growing user demand for chat and other instant-messaging services with mobile devices. The trio is inviting participation by other industry leaders.

The instant-messaging specification will be based on prevalent bearer protocols and other standards, such as Short Messaging Services (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Services, Wireless Application Protocol, Session Initiation Protocol and Extensible Markup Language. It will include security capabilities for user authentication, secure message transfer and access control, the companies said.

However, the question of truly "instant" messaging has been raised. Capacity overload at any stage of the network path can mean message delays of anywhere from 10 minutes to 24 hours, said Andreas Vogel, chief technical officer and founder of Mspect (Sunnyvale, Calif.). And with demand rising for multimedia messaging such as video, graphics and audio, the problem is only going to get worse, said Mark Adams, Mspect's chief executive officer and co-founder.

Mspect is promoting its global standard for quality of service (QoS) to help carriers and application providers improve the performance and reliability of the wireless Internet's data services. Operating on the principle that "end-to-end QoS" means being fully aware of the end-user experience, the company is setting up a global network of test stations in subscriber hot spots to monitor carriers' networks in real-time. Mspect will provide third-party QoS data to the carrier through a Web portal the carrier can configure itself.

"One of the key issues here was getting the test stations deployed and getting them connected," said Vogel. Mspect will typically rent an office in a busy cellular area, and from there will ping the local basestations to ensure responsiveness. An applications server will send out URL and SMS text for collection by these Mspect outposts, while a control center monitors everything.

"If a station is down, or unresponsive, we can have a report sent to the carrier within 15 minutes," said Adams. "This gives them enough time to get someone on the site before the customer complaints come rolling in."

Mspect recently received $9 million in first-round funding, led by Atlas Ventures, and is currently beta testing its service in the United States and Europe. Initial production Mspect posts are planned for Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Berlin and Hamburg, Germany.

"The Mspect system is a valid mechanism for testing one aspect of a carrier's network," said Yuval Davidor, founder of Schema Ltd. (Herzelia, Israel), a network analysis and optimization innovator with U.S. offices in Roseland, N.J. "But carriers need much more. We've shown that we can increase network capacity by over 20 percent, while also increasing the quality of service."

Schema uses the concept of evolutionary computation, rather than case-based reasoning, to converge from scratch an optimization plan for each network. Data for the computation comes from a wide range of sources to gain an accurate picture of what the network is doing. The multiple sources are then cross-referenced and the result used as data for the optimization algorithm.

"We bring together marketing information, engineering, operational and financial information, since all have a say in the spectrum utilization," said Davidor. "It takes it on a network-by-network basis and allows the carrier to increase either capacity or quality of service, or a combination of the two." The company says the result is fewer dropped calls, less blockage and lower bit error rates. Schema's customers include AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular.

The emergence of companies like Mspect and Schema reflects a trend toward the outsourcing of network management, testing and optimization. "If it's large, we do it internally, if small then we use outside vendors," said Ken Woo, director of communications at AT&T. "As we move toward newer technology, I suspect we might rely more on outside vendors."

Schema's Davidor pointed out that wireless networks are a tough nut for carriers to crack. "They've had years to perfect their wired networks, but they're lagging behind in maximizing the use of their wireless networks," and the task will get harder as wireless nets move to 2.5 and 3G, he said.

"Narrowband systems just required the allocation of spectrum. In spread-spectrum [technologies such as CDMA, cdma2000 and wideband CDMA], this doesn't exist. Instead, you allocate parameters such as power, size of the cell, RF parameters and dynamic handoff - this is much more complex." Two customers are about to deploy Schema's spread-spectrum solution, Davidor said.

Davidor said many carriers put off spending on their 2G networks to save for 3G. "Why fix the house when you're moving to a bigger and better [one]?" was the prevailing approach, he said. Thus, "The current infrastructure has to survive much longer than they anticipated, with much higher strain on the service. They have to really take optimization seriously and get every additional 1 percent improvement."

AT&T's Woo dismissed the notion that the telecom giant might have skimped on its 2G networks. "In the first quarter of this year alone, we've spent $1.5 billion covering holes and filling out coverage," he said.

But analyst Moeller agreed with Davidor. "We're hearing from all the U.S. operators that they're delaying deployment of any new 2G equipment as they try to figure out their 2.5 or 3G spending," he said.

Moeller pointed to a direct correlation between QoS and churn rate, "which ultimately translates into customer capture costs, which can be very expensive. It's cheaper to maintain what you have vs. trying to capture new customers."