SAN DIEGO-Two Asian carriers announced plans to launch CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Rev A networks by the end of next year-LG Telecom, a small Korean carrier, and KDDI Corp., Japan’s second-largest carrier and the country’s sole CDMA operator.
Sprint Nextel Corp., Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular Corp. have announced their intentions to launch EV-DO Rev A networks, but none has said when it plans to do so.
Typically, U.S. operators launch new technologies at least a year after Asia and Europe, but Cingular Wireless L.L.C. is expected to be one of the first carriers to launch an HSDPA 3G network.
“The evolution to EV-DO Rev A is a significant milestone for CDMA technology that will allow Sprint Nextel to further our leadership in wireless data services,” said Barry West, chief technical officer of Sprint Nextel. “Besides increasing data speeds, it will facilitate real-time applications that ride on top of the all-IP wireless converged network. Applications such as Voice Over IP, high-performance push-to-talk, and higher-speed data access are just of the examples of new services customer will enjoy with advent of EV-DO Rev A.”
In other Rev A news, Qualcomm Inc. recently announced a successful end-to-end EV-DO Rev A test call and said the market drive toward Rev A is accelerating. The Rev A upgrade to existing Rev. 0 networks is expected to increase uplink speeds from 144 kilobits per second-which is limited to the underlying 1x network speeds-to more than 1 megabit per second and support Voice over Internet Protocol applications.
