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Wireless
Korean CDMA2000, W-CDMA to do battle at World Cup
16/05/02 09:03 - by Staff Reporter
3G CDMA will get its 15 minutes of fame at the FIFA World Cup with KTF and SK Telecom both showcasing spanking new 1X EV-DO services capable of video-ondemand, streaming media and a multitude of multimedia content.
But that is not going to be the only 3G technology being displayed at the games. Both SKT and KTF and their 3G license holding affiliates – KTicom and SK IMT – are both preparing trial W-CDMA systems for the games.
LG Electronics’ network systems unit will be supplying 18 W-CDMA base stations to KTicom to set up a trial network around the Sangam World Cup stadium that will be supported by fully functional video camera-equipped W-CDMA handsets from LGE’s handset division.
According to Yon Chul-Heum, vice president at LGE’s UMTS systems research lab, both KTicom and SK IMT are expected to roll out W-CDMA service next year, despite media reports citing SKT officials to the contrary. KTicom wants to use WCDMA as a way to take over the number one position in the market, a Korean source said. KTicom will launch W-CDMA as early as the first quarter of 2003, he added.
In return, SK IMT is now stepping up their W-CDMA schedule in order not to fall behind. SKT will put their W-CDMA contract up for tender in July. Samsung and Ericsson are expected to be the third bidders for the contract.
Yon says that W-CDMA has some advantages when deployed to support multimedia content. “For applications like video telephony, the 1.25 MHz carrier of 2G CDMA means that each frequency area can only support three users,” Yon said. “With CDMA’s soft-handover feature, that means users will be connected to multiple cell sites, hence the number of users you can have in any given area is severely limited.” Unless hard-handover is adopted in CDMA, video telephony is not possible.
W-CDMA’s 5MHz carrier allows it to support about 20 video telephony users per frequency area. Sources at SKT say they expect W-CDMA to be the cash cow for the operator by 2005, replacing today’s CDMA systems.
Eventually SKT will probably replace their 800MHz network with W-CDMA, they said. |
