LAS VEGAS—Qualcomm Inc. announced it expects to see commercial CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision B devices on the market by the end of next year. The company did not say which carriers would launch the network technology, or which device makers were building Rev. B products.
“Consumers want devices that are smaller, lighter, faster, cheaper, as well as fully featured and with longer battery life,” said Sanjay Jha, president of Qualcomm’s CDMA Technologies division. “We are committed to enabling our customers to meet these market demands, rapidly moving forward in the evolution of CDMA2000 technology to bring unprecedented levels of data throughput and network capacity with EV-DO Rev. B—capabilities that are necessary to support tomorrow’s high-performance wireless applications.”
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Specifically, Qualcomm said it expects the first commercial EV-DO Rev. B products to be “data modems available in late 2007, with additional wireless devices available soon thereafter.” The most likely candidates for such devices are wireless modem makers Novatel Wireless Inc. and Sierra Wireless Inc., which were the first to the scene with EV-DO Rev. A PC cards.
Qualcomm said the EV-DO Rev. B standard supports up to 4.9 Mbps in each channel for a combined three-channel data speed of up to 14.7 Mbps on the downlink. The company said high-performance devices could support forward-link data rates of up to 73.5 Mbps, while lower-cost or pre-existing devices could support 4.9 Mbps. Qualcomm said EV-DO Rev. B would support applications such as mobile TV or streaming music with a concurrent voice call, or a Voice over Internet Protocol conversation simultaneously with Internet browsing.
Since devices are rarely introduced without a network to run on, it appears Qualcomm expects one of its carrier customers to launch an EV-DO Rev. B network by the end of next year. It’s unclear which carrier plans to launch an EV-DO Rev. B network in that timeframe, although Verizon Wireless is a likely candidate since the carrier is locked in a one-upmanship battle with Sprint Nextel Corp. While Verizon was the first to launch EV-DO capabilities, Sprint Nextel hopes to be the first to market with an EV-DO Rev. A network.
