Less than six months after CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Revision A service was first launched by Sprint Nextel Corp., both Sprint Nextel and its larger competitor Verizon Wireless have been speedily expanding their coverage areas-and appear to be neck-and-neck in terms of number of potential customers covered.
Sprint Nextel says its Rev. A coverage now reaches 140 million potential customers, while Verizon Wireless claims more than 135 million covered pops. Both companies say they will be done or nearly done with adding Rev. A coverage by the end of 2007.
“We’re well more than halfway there, and Dick Lynch, our CTO, has said that we’re covering significantly more than 135 million,” said Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.
Comparatively, Sprint Nextel covers about 209 million people with either Rev. 0 or Rev. A (or both); Verizon Wireless claims about 220 million pops covered by Rev. 0 and Rev. A. Both companies said that Rev. A uptake is going well.
Strong Rev. A uptake
“It’s even better than Rev. 0, but it’s incremental. And do people love it? Yeah, they really do,” Nelson said.
“We’re selling more cards each month,” said Scott Sloat, spokesman for Sprint Nextel. “Our card business, year-over-year, has doubled.”
In terms of devices, Sprint Nextel has five available, including four laptop PCMCIA cards and a Rev. A-capable USB modem. The company expects to launch a Rev. A handset in the first half of the year. Verizon Wireless offers two Rev. A-capable cards and also offers a USB modem.
Network yes, apps no
However, applications specifically designed and offered for use on the Rev. A network are largely unavailable at this point in the game.
“This is all about incremental speed,” said Nelson.
Sloat said that Sprint Nextel users can make use of GPS capabilities with some of the cards, which add value to the service. And he noted that high-performance push-to-talk is expected to be available via Rev. A within a year’s time, and the carrier plans to introduce a device that will use both iDEN and Rev. A for push-to-talk. This move is important for Sprint Nextel, which is trying to move its iDEN customers to its CDMA network but needs the higher-speed capabilities of Rev. A to offer a PTT service comparable to its iDEN network.
Both carriers claims Rev. A download speeds of between 600 kilobits per second to 1.4 megabits per second, and upload speeds of between 300 kbps and 500 kbps.
