HONG KONG-Not even torrential rains around portions of Hong Kong could dampen the spirits of CDMA supporters at the 3G World Congress. Even with the lack of sunshine outside, to go along with the lack of CDMA coverage for roaming, most attendees seemed bright on the prospects of next-generation services based on CDMA technology.
While most of the panelists during the conference sessions had vested interests in CDMA technology, including operators and vendors, a surprising number were from non-CDMA operations, including Japan’s NTT DoCoMo., AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and the GSM Association.
William Daley, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton, opened the conference with a pro-competition speech, which echoed CDMA’s position as it tried to enter the marketplace in the early ’90s.
“The one standard we can all agree on,” Daley said, “is the standard of competition.”
Daley also was part of a CDMA Development Group press conference touting China Unicom’s recent decision to deploy a CDMA network covering more than 13 million customers in China. Joining Daley were CDG Executive Director Perry LaForge, Larry Brittain, vice president of sales for Ericsson, Scott Erickson, senior VP of mobile segment for Lucent Technologies Inc., Ken Pecot, VP of Asia Pacific business operations for Nortel Networks, Simon Leung, corporate VP and general manager for Motorola Inc., Lirong Shi, senior VP for ZTE and Changmoon Han from SK Telecom.
The operator’s enthusiasm in finally getting a CDMA foothold in China was summed up by Erickson, who noted, “It’s been a long time coming, but now we can say we are fully supporting CDMA networks in China.” Erickson may have been a little extra excited since Lucent was said to have won the largest share of the infrastructure deal with China Unicom.
The news also caught the fancy of the Chinese press, who were out in force at the conference asking plenty of questions surrounding the technology.
While CDMA’s presence in China will still lag behind GSM, China Unicom is hoping to add more subscribers in the initial rollout of the network than Sprint PCS has added to its network in the United States since its inception.
Not to be overshadowed by foreign markets, the United States was well represented during many sessions by operators giving their opinions of network evolution paths for both CDMA and GSM protocols. The most telling was from AT&T Wireless Senior VP Jim Grams, who said next-generation operators need to focus on services that would be valued by their customers and not oversell the ability of the networks.
“This strategy does appear to be difficult to adhere to if you have competitors who are bringing faster data rates to market sooner, like CDMA 1x technology,” Grams said.
Grams also continued AT&T’s support of EDGE technology, noting that while not much was happening with the development of the advanced TDMA service, carriers looking to deploy EDGE need to take a leadership position. And, while not admitting to any technology mistakes AT&T may have made along its path to 3G services, Grams admitted the carrier was not prepared for how rapidly CDMA 1x has hit the market.
“We got a little complacent,” Grams said. “We thought CDMA technology would take longer than it had. You usually can add a few years to vendor plans for technology, but, you have to give credit to the 1x vendors for getting their products out on time.”
CDMA’s potential 3G advantages also were underlined by Nextel Communications Inc.’s VP of 3G Implementation, Tamara Casey, who, while not officially sending Nextel down the CDMA path for 3G, continued the carrier’s support for CDMA on its network by laying out reasons to implement the technology.
“The real appeal of CDMA is not in its data applications, but in its voice capacity,” Casey said. “We feel we offer an extremely competitive packet data network already.” Nextel currently offers a packet-data wireless data service at speeds of around 20 Mbps, with pending compression technology bumping that to around 50 Mbps.
But, before CDMA could proclaim victory with Nextel, Casey noted if the carrier had more spectrum to spare for 3G services, it would consider using wideband CDMA. Nextel currently has an average of 20 megahertz of spectrum in most of its markets, and would need additional capacity to be comfortable giving up the initial 5 megahertz needed to start W-CDMA.
“If there was a breakthrough in the spectrum situation in the U.S., we would seriously consider W-CDMA.”
Future migration paths for TDMA operators also was brought up repeatedly during the conference, with many of the vendors showcasing CDMA 1x paths TDMA operators should look at before making the decision on 3G services.
“There are significant reasons for TDMA operators to move to CDMA,” said Dave Murashige, VP of wireless marketing for Nortel Networks. “TDMA 850’s natural progression should be to CDMA.”
The CDMA path for TDMA operators was also the topic of a white paper introduced during the conference from The Shosteck Group spelling out compelling reasons for the switch.
“Overall, we indicate the possible challenges that TDMA/IS-136 operators may face in deploying GSM and the possible advantages that cdmaOne may offer,” the white paper concluded. “Based on these possible advantages, we suggest that TDMA operators may find it worthwhile to consider cdma2000/1x as its migration path.”
The CDG also singled out companies supporting CDMA with an awards ceremony at the Grand Hyatt Hotel overlooking the narrow causeway separating Hong Kong island from mainland China. U.S. operator Sprint PCS walked away with a pair of trophies for service innovation on the carrier’s use of 3G CDMA technologies to introduce new services into the marketplace and the industry leadership award presented to Oliver Valente for overseeing Sprint PCS’ Wireless Web offering and migration to 3G.
Korean operator SK Telecom walked away with the international leadership award for its deployment of the world’s first CDMA 1x network last year. Kyocera Wireless Corp. picked up the subscriber technology innovation award for the design and functionality of its QCP 6035 Smartphone. Lucent was tapped for the infrastructure technology innovation award for its support of 1x EV-DO, while Qualcomm Inc. was presented with the innovative solution award for its BREW application, designed to open CDMA networks to more applications.
