About 10 years ago Qualcomm Inc. had a goal-to ensure CDMA technology’s success by heavily promoting it, investing in companies that would deploy it and entering the equipment supplier business.
Now total worldwide Code Division Multiple Access subscribers number more than 43 million, and Qualcomm’s stock is soaring. The CDMA innovator is hoping the same three objectives will ensure widespread adoption of its High Data Rate product for high-speed Internet access.
But carriers today are slow to warm up to HDR technology as they have a plethora of technology choices with which to implement wireless data solutions. The challenge is to find the solution that makes the most sense in a third-generation market.
Qualcomm’s HDR product allows mobile access to the Internet at megabit speeds and can be optimized for other technologies besides CDMA. Many U.S. operators wonder if there is a market for megabit speeds in the mobile environment and whether they want to dedicate a standard 1.25-megahertz channel solely to data when voice service will be the primary driver of wireless for many years.
“Every carrier believes data is a line of business they have to be in,” said Matt Sopcich, director of wireless data with U S West Wireless, which has tested the product and continues to work with vendors on other similar solutions. “It’s more of a challenge to figure out what solution makes the most sense and gives the best platform to migrate from.”
Nationwide CDMA operator Sprint PCS continues to evaluate HDR technology along with other alternatives, analyzing the spectrum impacts as part of the process. It wants to determine what its needs are as its evolves its network into the 1XRTT platform and beyond. 1XRTT is supposed to give CDMA operators extra voice capacity and higher data speeds of about 115 kilobits per second.
Qualcomm’s recent demonstrations of the product at the company’s headquarters in San Diego showed mobile transmission speeds of 1.8 Mbps, though the company said HDR can and will commercially offer spectrally efficient speeds at 2.4 Mbps.
To spur HDR’s adoption, Qualcomm last week invested $200 million in Korea Telecom Freetel, which is expected to deploy HDR in its major markets during 2001 with Korean vendor Samsung. The CDMA operator today offers data access rates of 64 kbps and sees an increasing demand for wireless Internet access in Korea as landline Internet penetration remains low. Many telecommunications providers have not rolled out cable and digital subscriber lines in significant portions of Korea.
“We’ve been targeting Asia, Japan and Korea with the technology,” said Jeff Jacobs, Qualcomm’s senior vice president of corporate development. “Both Japan and Korea have rolled out IS-95B networks. They know the power of providing high-speed Internet access. Their markets are getting more saturated with voice users. They want to provide the best data solution to continue to attract users.”
In the United States, vendors publicly are lukewarm about HDR because they don’t know if their customers want it.
“Our customers aren’t sure how they want to go about this,” said Mark Buford, senior manager of media relations with Nortel Networks. “Our sense is they are looking for more of a combined voice and data solution … We’re following it to see what customer demand is going to be.”
Lucent Technologies Inc. said it is committed to 1XRTT and 3XRTT evolutions its customers are demanding.
“The bigger issue for the carriers is being convinced that high-speed wireless Internet is profitable, and there will be a market demand for it,” said Jacobs. “Clearly, one thing is to get infrastructure vendors to support HDR. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Manufacturers are not completely convinced until they see demand from the carrier. Carriers want a commitment from vendors.”
This is why Qualcomm plans to announce soon an industry consortium of carriers, manufacturers and Internet content providers that will help create the HDR standard. The group will be similar in structure to the WAP Forum, which was successful in pushing the Wireless Application Protocol as the standard Internet connection language for the wireless environment.
“Creating a standard is very key to us,” said Jacobs, who declined to name anyone who will be part of the new consortium. “We believe we will have little problem getting major infrastructure manufacturers, operators and content providers.”
Qualcomm hopes input from content providers will drive the design of Internet access devices. They also need to understand how to develop content that supports megabit wireless access speeds.
The company sold its infrastructure business to Ericsson Inc. in March, but will provide ASICs for HDR capable handsets. Earlier this month it introduced a family of HDR ASICs and software, and GTRAN Inc. recently entered into a CDMA and HDR license agreement with Qualcomm. It plans to offer modem card products for wireless applications using CDMA technology.
