Motorola's 'Breakthrough' Poses
New Wrinkle In 3G Standards
There could be a new wrinkle in the third-generation technology landscape.
At Wireless 2000 this week, Motorola's Network Solutions Sector announced what it calls a
"breakthrough technology enhancement" that it says complies with-and exceeds-the cdma2000
first-phase 1XRTT standard. The company said it also is seeking support in the industry to
present the technology to standards bodies.
The proposal, known as 1X Plus, comes at a time when CDMA operators are on the brink of
making technology commitments in the move to 3G. Many operators, including Bell Atlantic
Mobile and Sprint PCS, already have begun testing 1XRTT systems from various vendors.
Motorola also believes the proposed approach is a superior alternative to Qualcomm's High
Data Rate technology. Qualcomm announced this week that it has partnered with Lucent to
commercialize HDR for base station technologies and to pursue standardization of the
technology under the cdma2000 1X umbrella. Motorola and Nortel, among others, have
expressed reluctance to offer HDR because that technology currently is proprietary and
because it cannot co-exist with voice on the same CDMA carrier. That forces operators to
remove some voice capacity to put the data technology in.
Both approaches are new twists in the 3G standardization process. The International
Telecommunication Union is set to meet in late May to finalize IMT-2000 radio transmission
technologies. Whether this late-breaking proposal throws a monkey wrench in the international
or U.S. standardization process remains to be seen.
Nevertheless, Motorola believes it has a breakthrough technology.
Moe Grzelakowski, senior vice president and general manager of strategic marketing in
Motorola's network solutions sector, said the 1X Plus alternative will enable current CDMA
operators in the United States to upgrade their networks to provide many more services than
the 1XRTT and at less cost.
"1X Plus has some incredible upsides with respect to getting peak throughput on a single
CDMA carrier," she said.
The technology can be deployed on today's CDMA systems to achieve 3G-like data rates and
could obviate the need to purchase new or clear spectrum.
The first phase of 1X Plus would deliver up to 1.38 megabits per second throughput on a single
carrier. The second phase would deliver up to 5 megabits per second in a single carrier, roughly
double what could be delivered by installing 3XRTT.
The problem with a 3XRTT deployment, as she explained it, is that the approach doesn't use
available capacity efficiently once the first carrier in the channel is full. The difference can be an
8 percent to 25 percent capacity disadvantage compared to three 1X Plus installations.
"It begs the whole question of will anyone every go to 3X," Grzelakowski said.
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