In technology as in life, the last protocol on stage is the hero. While time will serve as jury in due course, for now the CDMA operators and manufacturers seem to be gloating, sometimes quietly and sometimes on rooftops, that they are a few steps ahead of their fellow competitor, wideband-CDMA, in the migration to the next generation of services.
Playing down its geographic reach and subscriber base for which the other technology exults, CDMA advocates are latching on to the proposition that profit today prepares you for tomorrow’s uncertainty.
“Neither technology will be a shrinking wall flower in the short term,” said David Murashige, vice president of marketing for Wireless Internet at Nortel Networks Corp. “But in the long run, no one can say.”
The CDMA technology has a lot of certainties to bask in. While a fog overhangs W-CDMA’s full launch around the world, many carriers have scheduled their launch either in the third or fourth quarter of this year, imparting a measure of confidence in an industry crippled by many false steps and a contracting economy. In fact, some carriers have already launched a version of 3G and thumped their chests as pioneers.
Again, NTT DoCoMo, the so-called bellwether of the opposing technology, had promised to launch its 3G services at the end of May this year. But the Japanese operator ate its words and rescheduled the launch for October.
South Korea sees itself as the Adam of 3G as one of the carriers, SK Telecom, has already launched its CDMA 2000 1x service, which is the first phase of the technology’s migration to full-blown third-generation services with speeds of 144 kilobits per second.
Qualcomm Inc., the torchbearer of the technology with several licensing agreements around the world, claims that SK Telecom has achieved data rates of up to 153 kbps in 23 cities, including Seoul, and it plans to expand to cover 81 cities starting in July.
“I’ve seen the services and they are working well,” remarked Christine Loredo, a senior analyst with the analyst firm Strategis Group.
According to Loredo, in the United States, Verizon Wireless Inc., Sprint Wireless and Alltel are poised to launch their services, with both Verizon and Alltel in the third quarter and Sprint in the fourth quarter of this year. In Canada, Bell Mobility plans to launch its services in the fourth quarter, while Telus Mobility is undergoing testing and hopes to launch its services in the third quarter.
In Brazil, Telesp Cellular and Vesper have scheduled their launch for the fourth quarter. Also scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year are Pegaso PCS of Mexico, Telecom Mobile Ltd. of New Zealand and KDDI of Japan.
Telcel of Venezuela and Telstra of Australia plan to launch in the third quarter.
“The drawback for CDMA2000 is that 63 percent of subscribers around the world will use GSM-based networks,” remarked Loredo.
Most of the 500 million GSM subscribers are expected to follow a migratory path to W-CDMA. CDMA has about 100 million subscribers.
Another Strategis Group analyst, Ozgur Aytar, said roaming constitutes one of the problems with the technology, especially in Europe, which is dominated by GSM. Qualcomm has, however, indicated that it is planning to roll out a chip by the end of this year to enable CDMA handsets to roam in GSM markets.
Dropped calls, a perennial plague of CDMA IS-95, its second-generation protocol, is also expected to riddle this new technology. The cumbersome solution has been to build more base stations.
While W-CDMA has been riddled with handset glitches, CDMA 2000 1x handsets are ready. About 32 handsets have been built for the launches and 14 handsets are already commercially available in Korea.
“Most of these phones are in the Asian market, but they will be in the Americas for the launches here,” said Aytar.
Aytar identified LG Electronics, Samsung and Motorola Inc. as manufacturers at the forefront of CDMA 2000 1x mobile-phone production. She said Web phones, PDAs, laptops and network interface units are the key devices now ready for the technology. Vesper uses the NIUs for fixed wireless local loops in Brazil.
Some of the phones are Samsung’s Sch x100, Sch x 120, x110, x130, x200 and Sph x1000. LG has Fiber x-1. SK Teletek has IN2300 used by SK Telecom. Motorola has V671C mobile phone.
The other upsides of the technology include ease of migration, backward compatible phones with extended life, doubled speed and synchronous base stations, according to Loredo.
“1x provides network operators with packet capabilities, initially enabling data throughput up to 153 kpbs (with an average throughput of 60-80 kbps) as well as providing a 2 times increase in voice capacity,” said WR Hambrecht + Co. “Deploying 1x is considered a relatively minor upgrade given that 1x can be deployed in existing spectrum, requiring only 2 x 1.25 MHz channels, and consisting primarily of software upgrades.”
The upgrades include new channel cards at base stations to support the new air interface and increased capacity, software upgrades at base station controllers, upgrades to the interworking function, which opens the way to a packet data service node and the deployment of an accounting, authentication and authorization server.
Murashige said the cost of installing 1x is incremental with between 10 and 15 percent of the original cost of the base station. What this means, he explained, is that there would not be a change of networks unlike the W-CDMA counterparts who will install new hardware and new networks based on new spectrum.
In the long run, said Murashige and Loredo, W-CDMA has the advantage of economy of scale because of the huge number of GSM subscribers who will migrate there.
The technology supports both consumer and enterprise applications, and the main platforms are Qualcomm’s BREW and Java. Loredo expects short message service, chats, video messaging and games to dominate the activities and generate huge revenue.
