TRENTON, N.J.-To paraphrase an old Barbra Streisand song, “On a rainy day, you can hear forever,” even when making a call to Colorado from a car parked beneath a water tower in the state capital of New Jersey.
That’s the sound quality of a brief personal trial of Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile’s new Code Division Multiple Access system, which debuted on a limited commercial basis in Trenton and neighboring Bucks County, Penn. in April. Bill Stone, staff director of digital planning and coordination, added this caveat: messages left on voice mail tend to be somewhat clearer than person-to-person conversations, both for the initiator and the recipient of the call.
“The hardware is set; the software still has some bugs in it,” Stone said. “I’m almost totally satisfied, but I’m difficult to satisfy.”
As of Sept. 16, there were 400 customers using Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile’s CDMA system, which has 16 cell sites within a radius of about 10 miles from downtown Trenton, according to Andrea Linskey, manager of public relations. All are small businesses that already were customers of the company’s analog system before accepting an offer to switch to CDMA service using dual-mode Sony Corp.-Qualcomm Inc. QCP 800 handsets.
Whether the call is local or long-distance, it is the location of the caller that determines whether it is transmitted using CDMA or conventional analog cellular, Stone said. From the user’s standpoint, the hand off is transparent.
“Typically, we expect the (retail) price of these phones to be in the range of $400 to $500,” Linskey said, expressing hopes that other handset manufacturers would get into the game and thereby lower costs to carriers and their customers.
Qualcomm, San Diego, whose founder Irwin Jacobs developed and patented the technology to make CDMA feasible by controlling power fluctuations, offers chip set purchase or licensing agreements to handset manufacturers, Stone said. “Just off the top of my head, Motorola (Inc.), Nokia Corp., Audiovox (Cellular Communications), Oki telecom and Lucky Goldstar have early production models or prototypes,” he added.
Customers in Bell Atlantic Nynex’ Trenton test commercial launch pay $40 per month for unlimited usage, Linskey said, adding that pricing may be different for new users in other markets where the company plans a first-quarter 1997 commercial rollout. Linskey said the debuts in 1997 would occur, “in at least two or three markets,” whereas Stone said a higher number is conceivable in his opinion.
Unlike AirTouch Communications Inc., San Francisco, Linskey said Bell Atlantic Nynex doesn’t plan to expand its commercial launch in the city where it began. Trenton was chosen because of available spectrum and its proximity to technical experts from Bell Atlantic Nynex and from Lucent Technologies Inc., one of two vendors supplying the cellular carrier with CDMA infrastructure, she said.
By contrast, AirTouch-second out of the box with a limited commercial CDMA rollout in Los Angeles in May-began adding another increment of 1,000 customers there to the 250 early adapters earlier this month.
“We haven’t made public our marketing strategy,” Linskey said, declining to identify areas that are targeted for a commercial CDMA rollout next year. However, Motorola announced Sept. 17 it had signed a $53 million network upgrade agreement with Bell Atlantic Nynex, which includes deployment of CDMA technology in Phoenix and Charlotte, N.C. Phoenix and Charlotte will begin offering the digital CDMA service in early 1997, according to the Motorola announcement.
Another difference between AirTouch and Bell Atlantic Nynex is in their choice of vocoders. The latter opted for the 13 kilobit-per-second vocoder with a one-on-one overlay because of its superior voice quality, according to Stone. “Originally, a few handset providers assumed that 8 kbps handsets would do, but they don’t meet our requirements.”
By contrast, Lee Cox, AirTouch’s vice chairman for domestic business said recently, “the jury is still out on 8 kbps vs. 13 kbps. There are enhanced `eights’ with as good a sound quality as `thirteens’ and much better capacity.”
Meanwhile, as Bell Atlantic Nynex’ new commercial launches near their start dates, Stone said his task is to, “tweak the parameters (of CDMA) to optimize the system. It’s a significant challenge because there is a tradeoff between voice quality and capacity.”
Qualcomm’s chief executive has come under criticism for what have proven to be exaggerated claims about the carrying capacity of CDMA. Early on, Jacobs said CDMA could carry 40 times the number of calls as analog cellular.
Linskey said a conservative estimate is six times. That is more than adequate not only to serve CDMA customers but also to free up capacity and help Bell Atlantic Nynex maintain its “robust” analog system, she said.
Stone added, “We’re seeing significantly better than six times, although it’s a little early to nail down; the important thing is that it’s exceeding my expectations.
“CDMA (also) has far greater potential to carry high-speed data, although we’re not running that in Trenton. Having invested a lot of money in high-speed data, CDMA makes sense to us.”
