ORLANDO, United States-Both the TDMA and CDMA camps released their most recent subscriber numbers at the PCS ’98 show in September in the United States.
The CDMA Development Group (CDG) announced that cdmaOne subscribers now number 16 million globally as of 30 September, with Asia being the dominant cdmaOne region at 11 million-due to the tremendous CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) participation by South Korea. North America came in second at 4.5 million, with the remaining 500,000 scattered throughout Eastern Europe, Mexico and South America.
This compares with 4.25 million worldwide last year at this time, said CDG Executive Director Perry Laforge.
The new Asia figures include the launch of cdmaOne by DDI Corp. this summer in Japan. DDI is reporting 2,000 to 3,000 customers being added a day, said Laforge. “We think Japan is going to continue to be a good market for us.”
Meanwhile, officials and members of the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium, TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) proponents, said carriers in the Asia-Pacific are beginning to re-evaluate their choice of digital technology, opening a new door for TDMA in the region.
The group held a press conference to release its latest TDMA subscriber figures and projections for South America, the region that together with North America includes most of TDMA’s nearly 14 million subscribers worldwide. South America had 2.7 million TDMA subscribers as of year-end 1997, a figure that jumped to 4.9 million as of 1 July-an 81-percent increase, according to the UWCC. The group projects 6 million subscribers by the end of the year, with a forecasted 17.3 million South American users by year-end 2002.
North America had 4 million TDMA subscribers as of the end of 1997 and 6.1 million as of 1 July, said the UWCC. Year-end North American figures are projected at 8.5 million, with 42.2 million by the end of 2002.
Worldwide, the UWCC projects 115 million users by year-end 2002.
The markets of North America and South America, where AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service) is the de facto analog standard, always have been a stronghold for TDMA. But elsewhere, advancement of the TDMA standard has been comparatively weak.
In Asia, there are only pockets of TDMA, including Hong Kong Telecom CSL’s network in Hong Kong.
To reach the worldwide TDMA subscriber figures it is projecting, the UWCC recognizes it needs to focus more attention on the Asia-Pacific region. The current economic situation there, along with the turmoil over third-generation cellular standards, is causing carriers to take another look at their plans for digital, according to the UWCC. This, say TDMA proponents, is creating a new window of opportunity.
TDMA proponents still have hopes for the technology in China, and they were lobbying hard recently for the technology in Australia. They eventually lost out in Australia in October when Telstra Corp. finally announced it will use CDMA to build out its second digital network.
The UWCC gave CDMA folks a surprise at the show, however, announcing that it and the North American GSM Alliance L.L.C. will join forces to collaborate on next-generation technology and to provide a unified lobbying force in Washington.
