By rolling out services in two U.S. markets, Verizon Wireless has triggered momentum for CDMA2000 1X EV-DO technology, barely two years since the first launch of CDMA2000 1X services in the world.
The EV-DO launches, which took place in San Diego and Washington, D.C., are predicted by industry experts to signal a flurry of EV-DO services from carriers worldwide.
Operators close to unveiling their services later this year include KDDI in Japan, wireless local loop carrier Vesper in Brazil, Thailand’s EPBW and Indonesia’s PT Wind.
Already, South Korea, the perennial John the Baptist of technology, has generated breakneck traffic for EV-DO services from carriers SK Telecom and KTF, which also were the first to launch 1X services, the predecessor to EV-DO technology.
Verizon’s announcement also casts an industry gaze at Sprint PCS, the other major U.S. CDMA player that has insisted it will skip EV-DO for the next step, EV-DV. Sprint said its 1X speed is sufficient for some services it plans to roll out nationwide.
The DO momentum also mounts pressure on GSM/GPRS carriers like AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and Cingular Wireless L.L.C., which have geared up their data strategies by pursuing the launch of EDGE technology, although some rollout dates remain uncertain.
Verizon’s launch targets the enterprise space, which follows a trend to use businesses to leverage pushes to the mass market.
“If, when, where and how we deploy DO depends on our experience in the two markets,” said Andrea Linskey, spokeswoman for Verizon. “They are market trials.”
She said the enhancement of the service centers on speed, which surpasses 1X and which she compared with dial-up. DO is comparable with a broadband desktop connection with speeds between 300 kilobits per second and 600 kbps. No handsets have been released for the service, so it will be used in wireless notebooks with modem cards, first in the Verizon PC5220.
“Its destiny is to be a broadband MMS service,” said Randy Battat, chief executive officer of Irvana, which provides DO solutions. “It will be used not just for PCs but also for handsets.”
Linskey said with the advantage of speed, enterprises will decide what services and applications they prefer. Unlike 1X, which offers basic services such as e-mail, ring tones, enhanced voice and screen savers, DO provides multimedia services including video and audio streaming, e-mail attachments, MP3 and gaming. Korean carriers offer broadcasting for three to five channels on handsets.
The mass market, which Verizon plans to later pursue, seems to be Sprint’s focus, according to John Delaney, principal analyst at Ovum.
“It’s a chicken-and-egg question for Sprint,” said Delaney of the possibility of Sprint going back on its decision to roll out DO. He said if the uptake of Verizon’s DO service is positive, the carrier may go the DO route. But he said the carrier may never know the DO response unless it tries the market with the product.
Sprint offers picture messaging on its 1X handsets, but analysts said it doesn’t have the same resolution promised in multimedia services.
In Japan, Vodafone K.K., formerly J-Phone Co., has enjoyed great traction from its camera services. NTT DoCoMo Inc. also offers the services under its W-CDMA FOMA brand.
Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDMA Development Group, said that while Sprint is looking at the protocol in action, it is also focused on EV-DV, a protocol that already is close to having its specification approved by the International Telecommunication Union.
“Sprint’s business model has been to have data and voice on a single carrier,” remarked Ruchi Prasad, director, CDMA global product marketing at Nortel Networks Ltd.
LaForge said DV is grabbing the attention of Sprint, especially as major players including Nokia Corp. throw their weight behind it. But he said Sprint is not turning a blind eye to DO; the operator leaves its options open.
“It’s a carrier’s choice on how they want to provision their network,” he said.
The smooth transition to DO comes from its simple technological tweaking. Carriers need only a software upgrade, according to Battat.
Both Prasad and Battat explain that Korea provides an example of how the services work. The operators launched a 1X service known as NATE and harnessed its success for the DO service known as JUNE. SKT has seen an average revenue per user leap of 90 percent of both NATE and JUNE, said Battat. Prasad said SKT’s DO consumer traffic has increased 15 times compared with 1X traffic.
