Nokia threw its support behind Motorola Inc.’s 1X Plus proposal last week and said it is evaluating making cdmaOne-based infrastructure equipment.
Motorola announced earlier this month plans to challenge Qualcomm Inc.’s proprietary High Data Rate technology, introducing its own 1XRTT enhancement for cdmaOne carriers to consider. Virtually all Code Division Multiple Access carriers plan soon to migrate to 1X technology, which offers extra voice capacity and higher data speeds of about 144 kilobits per second.
Motorola’s and Nokia’s new proposal, now named 1XTREME, consolidates Nokia’s work on Internet Protocol technology and Motorola’s 1X Plus proposal. Nokia, the only major vendor today that does not make cdmaOne infrastructure, said it is evaluating the opportunity to enter the infrastructure business related to this proposal.
“This complements our other proposals for harmonization and our existing plans to drive forward with other initiatives in the field of 3G,” said Arja Suominen, spokeswoman for Nokia in Finland. “Since 1XTREME is based on open interfaces, it can also be connected to the 3G Global Packet Core networks … This enables cdmaOne operators to deploy all-IP networks.”
A new standoff in the cdmaOne community is brewing over high-speed data enhancements. CdmaOne heavyweight Lucent Technologies Inc. and Qualcomm support HDR technology and Motorola and Nokia are on the other side. Both HDR and 1XTREME technologies fit into a standard 1.25-megahertz channel. But HDR technology is dedicated solely to high-speed data, with the goal to achieve 2.4-megabit speeds. The 1XTREME proposal allows for voice and data to coexist on the same channel, allowing operators to use base station assets more efficiently and cheaply, said Motorola. Phase 2 of the 1XTREME proposal is designed to reach 5.2-megabit speeds.
Qualcomm has been pushing HDR technology for many months signing a few licensees, but carriers-still unsure of how the data market will take off-are leery about dedicating an entire channel to data. Lucent announced its support for the technology earlier this month.
The nation’s largest cdmaOne operator, Sprint PCS, said it isn’t convinced HDR in today’s form is acceptable.
“We’ll be working with our vendors and other operators to come up with a high-speed data standard that does,” Oliver Valente, vice president of technology and advanced systems development with Sprint PCS, told RCR last month.
Motorola and Nokia are quickly approaching 3G standards bodies. Qualcomm and Lucent plan to introduce HDR this week into standards bodies, likely earlier than they had planned.
“The CDG operators group was working on a process to identify requirements for high-speed data services,” said Christine Trimble, spokeswoman for Qualcomm. “By virtue of their recent actions, Motorola and Nokia circumvented this process by introducing 1XTREME into the standards process. On the other hand, Qualcomm is seeking the guidance of operators and working with other vendors to see how to bring HDR into the standards process quickly.”
Motorola said it is working with other network providers and operators. There are more supporters of the technology it can’t publicly reveal, Motorola said.
Industry insiders say Motorola’s and Nokia’s move is potentially a way to avoid intellectual property rights Qualcomm holds to cdmaOne and HDR technology. Analysts say carriers today are paying higher prices for handsets because of the royalties manufacturers pay to Qualcomm for cdmaOne handsets. This option would work around the need for Qualcomm’s chipsets and software, insiders believe. Qualcomm’s Trimble said Motorola and Nokia will not only have to contend with patents they have seen but many additional ones which still are in process.
Motorola declined to comment on whether this technology avoids many of Qualcomm’s patents.
“We are currently evaluating the IPR situation,” said Roderick Kelly, spokesman for Motorola.
However, Motorola’s and Nokia’s claims about 1XTREME technology still are just on paper. The companies haven’t made any testing claims about the new technology. Qualcomm’s demonstrations of HDR technology in November produced transmission speeds of 1.8 megabits per second.
“The performance cannot be quantified by manufacturers in the industry, including the proponents of the 1XTREME proposal,” said Holly Newman, CDMA data product management director for Lucent’s wireless networks group. “There have been no demonstrations of 1XTREME and to our knowledge there are none planned. Lucent has been able to characterize the performance of the HDR proposal which has been demonstrated by Qualcomm. The HDR proposal is technically complete with an implementable network architecture.”
Lucent said it plans to support trials of HDR technology by year-end, with plans to offer products by the first quarter 2002. Motorola and Nokia expect commercial 1XTREME equipment by 2002.
Motorola also is proposing a minor enhancement to the existing 1X standard allowing for data rates up to 1.6 Mbps. Trials for both this enhancement and 1XTREME will happen by the end of this year.
