DENVER, United States-Qualcomm is putting a financial stake in the ground to push CDMA technology in Europe.
Qualcomm announced plans to acquire U.K.-based Tellit Communications, a cellular handset design and manufacturing company with expertise in NMT 450 technology. The purchase price is around US$20 million, sources say.
“Tellit has been very successful in pioneering the development of low-power mobile technology for the European market, and we look forward to utilizing this expertise to help accelerate the acceptance of CDMA worldwide,” said Rich Sulpizio, president and chief operating officer of Qualcomm.
The CDMA community hopes the NMT 450 market will pave the way for the technology’s first introduction in Europe, where regulators have mandated GSM technology in the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands. The NMT MOU voted late last year to accept both GSM and CDMA technologies as migration paths from their analog networks.
“Tellit’s success with innovative R&D- (research and development) driven solutions in RF design will dovetail nicely with Qualcomm’s world-leading CDMA expertise and paves the way for the introduction of CDMA into Europe,” said John Masters, Tellit managing director.
Qualcomm and Lucent Technologies told the NMT community they are committed to making CDMA equipment for the 450 MHz band. But Qualcomm may be precluded from manufacturing handsets since it sold its handset business to Kyocera. Its agreement with Kyocera allows Qualcomm to design and develop handsets, but not to manufacture them.
Qualcomm is likely to design the handsets and manufacture chipsets and software, selling them to other manufacturers interested in building CDMA handsets for this market. It kept a number of consumer product employees that will work on a contract basis in assisting Kyocera’s CDMA handset business.
It’s unclear what handset manufacturers may be interested in pursuing this market with CDMA technology. Ericsson and Nokia-the primary NMT 450 network suppliers throughout Europe-have said they support the European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s (ETSI’s) work on a global standard for GSM technology in the 450 MHz band.
Nokia, however, has said it will evaluate making CDMA handsets if operators choose this technology. Nokia has yet to purchase any chipsets or components from Qualcomm for its current generation of CDMA handsets.
Eastern European NMT 450 operators are seen as the most likely candidates for CDMA technology. Westel Radio Telephone in Hungary and Romania’s TeleMobile have voiced their interest in the technology. These operators, which are experiencing strong growth, want to differentiate their services from GSM technology.
While GSM technology is the mandated standard in Europe, NMT 450 operators are in a unique position because they don’t fall under the auspices of ETSI, and the European Union doesn’t have control over industry actions in Eastern Europe. NMT operators historically have created their own analog standards.
However, some NMT 450 operators never received permission from their telecommunications ministries to migrate to digital technology. They will have to convince regulatory bodies to allow them to migrate to digital service and hope the ministry doesn’t mandate a certain technology.
Tellit is heavily entrenched in the NMT 450 market, having recently introduced a feature-rich analog NMT handset, which is gaining strong interest from operators. It was the first company to design a cellular handset based on new Low Emission Mobile Station (LEMS) technology.
