Motorola Takes Own Road With 1X Plus
By Peggy Albright
Story URL: wirelessweek.com
Motorola apparently caught some of the CDMA industry by surprise when it introduced its "1X Plus" technology at CTIA's Wireless 2000 in New Orleans.
But as the dust settles, observers and analysts say they view the potential technology option as an example of CDMA's flexibility to meet varying operator and network needs. Some also see it as a competitor to Qualcomm's High Data Rate technology that by some accounts has not met with widespread operator acceptance.
Motorola's network solutions sector at Wireless 2000 touted 1X Plus as a "breakthrough technology enhancement" that it says complies withÿ-and exceedsÿ-the cdma2000 1XRTT protocol being considered as a possible 3G standard. The company says it plans to deliver a detailed presentation on the technology to CDMA Development Group operators within the next couple of months as it tries to gain acceptance for the approach.
The 1X Plus approach comes as North American CDMA operators in this country, including Bell Atlantic Mobile and Sprint PCS, already have begun testing 1XRTT systems. Those systems purportedly can double network voice capacity while providing mobile data rates up to 144 kilobits per second, with speeds up to around 300 kbps from fixed wireless setups.
While 1X Plus potentially could give operators another deployment option, the approach is distinct from 1XRTT and should not interfere with decisions as to whether or not to deploy 1X, says Brian Modoff, an analyst at Deutsche Bank Alex.Brown. "This has no effect on 1X. This is a separate thing."
But Maureen Grzelakowski, general manager of trategic marketing in Motorola's Network Solutions Sector, says the 1X Plus approach will enable current CDMA operators to provide vastly more services more cheaply within the 1.25 megahertz channel structure than 1XRTT itself would allow.
"1X Plus has some incredible upsides with respect to getting peak throughput on a single CDMA carrier," she says.
Grzelakowski adds that 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.
Motorola claims the first phase of 1X Plus would deliver up to 1.38 megabits per second peak throughput on a single carrier. The second phase of 1X Plus would deliver around 5 Mbps on a single carrier in a fixed environment, more than double what could be delivered by installing the second phase of cdma2000, which is called 3XRTT. 3X would provide a peak data rate of around 2 Mbps in a fixed environment, Motorola claims.
Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDMA Development Group, says he could not comment about new, specific technical solutions, but that companies should view 1X Plus as a "fourth-generation" technology for carriers interested in pushing 1.25 megahertz channel performance beyond 1XRTT levels.
"That's the beauty of what we've done with CDMA. Operators will have options of what they want to be able to grow to and we will make sure they are all compatible," he says.
In other words, LaForge says, operators will have various advanced technology deployment options, from 1X to HDR to 3XRTT, to other options that may be developed for 1XRTT, or including the competing IMT-2000 standard, W-CDMA.
In fact, Bell Atlantic Mobile spokeswoman Andrea Linskey notes that the carrier would be evaluating 1X Plus in addition to several other 3G technologies that go beyond 1XRTT.
But Modoff says 1X Plus could compete against Qualcomm's HDR technology, which is designed to offer a peak 2.4 Mbps data rate. Qualcomm is urging the CDMA industry to adopt HDR as a complement to 1XRTT, and at Wireless 2000 announced 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 other vendors, are reluctant to offer HDR because that technology currently is proprietary and because it cannot coexist with voice on the same CDMA carrier, forcing operators to remove some voice capacity to add the data technology.
Qualcomm says it was not yet familiar with the technical details of the 1X Plus technology and as of last week still had seen only Motorola's press release about it.
"As far as comparisons to HDR, we believe that placing data and voice on separate carriers allows better optimization for each and so less complicated than 1X Plus and will reach market earlier."
LaForge says CDG operators are evaluating their network requirements before deciding what new and additional standards to pursue for future systems.
"Our goal would be to make sure that if carriers want the option of HDR that we develop a technology roadmap that facilitates the adoption of HDR or even 1X Plus or whatever it may be called," he says. "That's what we're working on with the operators right now."
Motorola says it will have a detailed proposal to explain to the CDG how 1X Plus meets those needs. And that may be where Motorola's lonely avenue intersects with Main Street. |
