VANCOUVER, British Columbia-Following successful completion of field trials of Northern Telecom Ltd.’s 800 MHz Code Division Multiple Access network, BC Tel Mobility has committed to move forward with full commercial rollout of its CDMA digital cellular service in British Columbia, Canada.
“Our trials and controlled early deployment to date have proven our choice of Nortel and CDMA was sound,” said Rob Cruickshank, president and chief operating officer of BC Tel Mobility. “I’m delighted to say the network is meeting or exceeding all of our expectations for performance and voice quality, and we’re aggressively moving forward with our network buildout with an eye on commercial service availability in early 1997.”
During the trials conducted in the fourth quarter of 1995, the first CDMA calls were completed using 13 kbps voice coding technology on commercial hardware deployed in a live user environment.
BC Tel selected Nortel to provide CDMA network infrastructure equipment in March 1995. Under a new agreement, Nortel will supply $60 million in CDMA radio base station equipment, mobility services and mobility switching over five years to overlay BC Tel Mobility’s existing Nortel analog cellular network.
Nortel’s CDMA digital cellular network solution includes radio base station equipment designed in collaboration with Qualcomm Inc. and Nortel’s DMS-MTX digital mobile switching system.
