Verizon Wireless, now the country’s largest operator, said it will begin field trials of cdma2000 1XRTT technology with Lucent Technologies Inc. in June, and follow with a rollout of the technology next year.
Verizon is the second U.S. Code Division Multiple Access operator to announce plans to roll out the technology by next year. Sprint PCS plans to commercially deploy 1X technology by mid-2001. The carrier is in the process of testing the technology today with vendors Lucent, Motorola Inc., Nortel Networks, Samsung Telecommunications America Inc. and Qualcomm Inc.
The 1X standard is designed to double the voice capacity of CDMA systems and add 144 kilobit data rates. Lucent and Qualcomm last week announced live transmissions of over-the-air data at 153 kbps using a streaming video application.
“This demonstration is proof that CDMA provides the most cost-efficient, graceful evolution to 3G services, exceeding all other competing digital standards,” said Bill Stone, executive director of network planning for Verizon Wireless. “We look forward to conducting field trials this summer with Lucent, device manufacturers and content providers. Our plan is to make these data access speeds available to customers sometime next year.”
Sprint PCS and Samsung as well as Nortel and Bell Mobility previously have demonstrated voice calls over a 1X network. Nortel also has demonstrated wireless packet data sessions in its Ottawa, Canada, lab.
Lucent said its data demonstration used a CSM5000 Cell Station Modem in Flexent base stations. Qualcomm’s 3G 1X Mobile Handset Development Platform featuring the MSM5000 chipset and system software also was used in the demonstration.
