The CDMA Development Group said it expects handset makers to introduce commercial Code Division Multiple Access handsets with subscriber identity modules by the end of the year to allow for global roaming.
The CDG announced late last month that the Telecommunications Industry Association will approve the CDMA SIM standard for publication. The SIM was standardized to maximize a similarity between CDMA and Global System for Mobile communications SIM applications, said Terry Yen, director of Asia Pacific Projects with the CDG.
The main driver for roaming in the GSM community comes from Asia, the market leader in CDMA technology growth. Asia supports about 28 million CDMA subscribers today out of the more than 50 million worldwide subscribers and wants to be able to roam in a global market dominated by GSM technology.
Moreover, one of Asia’s most influential operators, China Unicom, is deploying CDMA technology throughout China and wants CDMA handsets that support SIMs to augment the extensive GSM networks already launched in China.
“Asia has always led in subscribers,” said Yen. “China Unicom will have tens of millions of subscribers and Japan is growing about a million a month. I strongly believe as long as Asia is going to continue to outgrow the rest of the world, the majority of CDMA networks and subscribers will have SIM-capable phones.”
While the CDMA community is embracing SIM, the Time Division Multiple Access and GSM communities are working on TDMA/GSM phones that are commercially expected this year. It’s unclear if the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium will endorse SIMs for TDMA phones. The UWCC has said it wants the network intelligence in the network rather than within a SIM.
The CDMA community won’t see a CDMA/GSM handset anytime soon because of the complex nature of molding both technologies into one handset.
“When we started on the SIM card approach, one of the major drivers was international roaming,” said Yen. “We asked vendors what would commercially become available faster. They said a CDMA phone with SIM capability would become available more quickly.”
CDMA operators will now have to work to secure roaming agreements with their GSM counterparts. The groups historically have been intense adversaries, rigorously pushing and defending their technologies for adoption around the world. However, global consolidation has resulted in many carriers operating disparate technologies in different markets.
To address the new business needs, the GSM Association late last year established the Global Roaming Forum to discuss roaming between different standards. CDG, UWCC and GSM Association members attended the first meeting in Chicago last month.
