Bridge across mobile tech divide
M RAJENDRAN
The Telegraph 1/18/04
telegraphindia.com
New Delhi, Jan. 18: Mobile phone users can soon forget all about the alphabet soup.
The cellular space has two competing technologies — code division multiple access (CDMA, which Reliance Infocomm uses) and global system for mobile communications (GSM, which cellular players like AirTel and Hutch deploy).
Now, there’s an attempt to bridge the divide to make mobile phones and mobile devices technology neutral.
Technically, what this means is that a Reliance Infocomm subscriber will be able to hook on to an AirTel network if he travels to an area not covered by his operator — without having to change the SIM card.
Currently, if your CDMA phone is registered with Reliance, then it is not possible to use the subscriber identification module (SIM) card of AirTel or of any other GSM operator on that phone. But Irwin Jacobs, chairman and chief executive officer of Qualcomm Inc, the pioneers of CDMA, has projected that India will soon have ‘dual mode phones’.
These phones will be commercially available in the Chinese and European market from next month.
“The dual mode phones will allow the subscribers to get service using the CDMA and GSM technology from the same phone. In future, there will be no need even to use two different SIM cards. The networks embedded with new technology chips will allow the subscriber to use a dual mode phone to use a GSM or CDMA network,” said Jacobs.
The company has announced the availability of dual-band mobile phones from Samsung. The new phones will be able to function both in CDMA and GSM network automatically without the subscribers having to manually change the setting on their phones or SIM cards.
“We have already developed the chip that supports both CDMA and GSM/GPRS phones. These phones will be commercially available next month in China and Europe. In India, the prototypes of these phones are being tested and will be commercially available based on the regulatory and market response,” Jacobs said.
Industry observers say Motorola is also developing a phone that can be used as fixed-line and mobile phone and a device for internet connection. These devices are likely to be available by the middle of this year in India.
The Qualcomm chief is bullish about the prospects for the growth of mobile telephony based on CDMA technologies in China and India.
“Both countries (China and India) have shown remarkable growth in the first year. We saw that China in the second year had a tremendous growth of about 12 million subscribers. India, I am confident, will overtake that number in its second year,” he said.
The worldwide subscriber base of CDMA, currently at 170 million, is expected to grow by 30 per cent next year.
The company has also developed a new technology called GSM1X, which it has already demonstrated to the mobile operators using the GSM technology and is awaiting a response from the operators.
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