Cingular Wireless L.L.C. used last week’s Lehman Brothers 2004 Global Wireless financial conference to announce its UMTS rollout plans, while rival carrier Sprint Corp. backed off earlier promises that it would wait for DV technology to roll out its high-speed data offering.
Cingular said that due to its pending $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services Inc., it now had enough resources and clout to move ahead with plans to test UMTS services in the United States. Cingular’s UMTS plans would align the carrier with AWS, which is currently scheduled to launch UMTS services in four markets by the end of the year through a technology-sharing agreement with NTT DoCoMo Inc.
“We’ll have enough power to have a significant voice in how we want that to roll out, the price point we want to roll out, what the devices should and should not be able to do,” said Stan Sigman, Cingular president and chief executive officer. “The new company has a significant influence in all of that, where the standalone company, neither one of them, could have done that.”
Cingular backed its UMTS plans by announcing a deal with Lucent Technologies Inc., which is also helping AWS with its UMTS trials, to deploy a test network this summer in Atlanta, allowing the carrier to evaluate mobile voice, high-speed data and multimedia services. The network trial will use Cingular’s 1.9 GHz spectrum and the Merlin U520 UMTS Wireless PC Modem Card jointly developed by Lucent and Novatel Wireless to support internal users and network speeds of up to 384 kilobits per second.
In addition to the UMTS tests, the trial will also include testing of High Speed Downlink Packet Access technology, which is ultimately designed to provide data speeds of up to 14.4 megabits per second and support Voice over Internet Protocol services in the future.
“This trial offers us an ideal opportunity to evaluate the capabilities and range of services that we can offer to our customers using UMTS and HSDPA technology and overcome technical challenges before pursuing broader deployments,” said Kris Rinne, acting chief technical officer at Cingular.
The carrier added it does not expect to begin commercial deployments of UMTS services until at least 2005, citing the lack of sufficient equipment designed to operate in the 1.9 GHz spectrum band. UMTS equipment being deployed in Europe today uses 2.1 GHz spectrum.
Cingular also noted that as part of its UMTS plans it would work only with vendors that commit to developing the technology to work in the 850 MHz spectrum band, which accounts for a large portion of both Cingular’s and AWS’ networks, as well as providing smaller rural carriers that often control only 850 MHz spectrum the ability to roll out UMTS services in the future.
Sigman downplayed the recent announcement by Verizon Wireless that it plans to spend $1 billion during the next two years to deploy CDMA2000 1x EV-DO across its network as a motive for Cingular’s UMTS plans, noting the market would drive demand for such services, and Cingular’s nationwide EDGE launch, set to be completed this summer in connection with AWS’ current nationwide EDGE network, would provide a solid solution until UMTS is deployed.
“Denny and Verizon announced they are making a billion-dollar commitment to DO,” Sigman noted. “EDGE is a good solution, though it’s not a DO solution. UMTS would trump that. In my judgement [UMTS] is better than DO in that it’s a voice/data combination solution so if we can get it at the right price points, we can put our voice growth on that technology along with the data speeds and data applications.”
While Cingular was solidifying its UMTS plans, Sprint PCS appeared uncertain as to what its next-generation future held. The carrier has repeatedly said it will wait to deploy CDMA2000 1x EV-DV technology once it becomes available, which is expected by next year, but noted last week that it could deploy another solution sooner if there was enough demand.
“We are taking a look at what our next steps should be for high-speed data,” said Sprint President and Chief Operating Officer Len Lauer.
Lauer noted that while the carrier’s currently deployed CDMA2000 1x network continues to perform “extremely well,” a higher-speed network would be needed for more bandwidth-intensive applications like video streaming. To meet those demands, Lauer said Sprint had three alternatives-to follow Verizon Wireless’ lead with a DO deployment, wait for DV to be ready or explore other alternatives using its 2.5 GHz MMDS spectrum holdings.
“There are some areas where we can deploy an existing network with current providers using a standard based on the 802.16 or WiMax standard,” Lauer said. “We could also bring a lot of outside-the-industry players on board offering something similar to Wi-Fi. We are looking at these things, we’re balancing time to market, we’re balancing architecture and also balancing costs to deploy, but we are very, very close to coming out with a decision on this one. We are excited about the number of options we have and really excited about what we have with MMDS. Whether we decide to deploy now or in a couple of years, it really takes care of any spectrum issues.”
Nextel Communications Inc. has made similar proclamations about its MMDS spectrum holdings for high-speed data services and is testing Flarion Technologies’ Flash-OFDM service in North Carolina using the 2.5 GHz spectrum band.
T-Mobile USA Inc. also remained non-committal on its next-generation plans, but said last week that it would have EDGE capabilities on its network by the end of this year with plans to begin marketing the service early next year.
“Our intent is to make sure [EDGE] matches up with the capabilities of the devices in the marketplace and take advantage of the applications that can fully utilize EDGE,” explained T-Mobile USA President and CEO Robert Dotson.
Unlike Cingular and AWS’ more recent GSM deployments, T-Mobile USA’s more mature GSM network includes base stations that were not designed with EDGE capabilities and therefore the carrier has had to do more extensive modifications to implement the higher-speed technology. Analysts also noted T-Mobile USA’s recent strong growth also could hamper its ability to free-up spectrum for a UMTS deployment.
Dotson added that T-Mobile USA would continue to leverage its expanding HotSpot Wi-Fi service offering and that it planned to launch a bundled GPRS/Wi-Fi product in the next 60 days.
On a regional scale, Alltel Corp. recently announced plans to expand its 1x-based service into more areas as well as expand the footprint in existing markets, but noted last week that it would begin trialing DO in a number of markets by the end of the year.
