InterDigital Touts TDD
WIRELESS DATA NEWS
February 26, 2003
InterDigital Communications [NASDAQ: IDCC] doesn't obscure its interest in accelerating wireless carriers' deployment of the time-division duplex (TDD)component of 3G wideband-CDMA networks. Neither is it being mum about what it expects operators to save by launching TDD sooner rather than later.
InterDigital licenses much of the TDD technology that equipment manufacturers need for W-CDMA network gear. So far, though, W-CDMA deployments have been limited largely to the frequency-division duplex (FDD) component in the paired bands of spectrum allocations. W-CDMA networks work with FDD alone, but gain capacity with TDD, which is deployed in un-paired bands of spectrum and which has higher capacity for data than FDD.
King of Prussia, Pa.-based InterDigital has much to gain with more TDD activity because its highest concentration of intellectual property rights is in TDD.
"It serves our purpose," Alain Briancon, InterDigital's executive vice president and chief technology officer, tells Wireless Data News. "It helps InterDigital because we will more rapidly sell our technology to those equipment makers for them to provide value to the operators."
The company hopes the results of a study it conducted with research firm Arthur D. Little will show operators the benefits of TDD. According to the study, TDD can provide approximately 50 percent savings for operators over 10 years, and 25 percent to 35 percent savings in wide-area broadband data deployment scenarios.
InterDigital expects those figures to compel W-CDMA operators to move to TDD. Operators have been saying, "We'll get to TDD when we can," Briancon says. But he expects them to change their approach when he responds, "You can save 50 percent on the cost of ownership of earning 3G customers if you start deploying
TDD 3 years from now rather than 10 years from now."
Alain Briancon, Alain.briancon@interdigital.com.
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