Mr. Schlake,
Thank you for the information and the reference. I would only note that the License is for what is called Broadband (2 GHz) PCS. A 9/15/96 America's Network article posted below discusses Broadband PCS (in CDMA's case, Broadband CDMA) and is located on the Web at americasnetwork.com :
Broadening CDMA's Pipe
Wideband CDMA gears for apps of tomorrow
David Kopf
Sometimes the best is never good
enough. At least that seems to be the
case for CDMA. Despite the fact that
Code Division Multiple Access already
offers customers toll-quality voice, caller
ID, paging and short messaging, there
are already proposals for a bigger and
better--aka wideband--version of current CDMA
technology, which those proposals describe as
narrowband CDMA (N-CDMA).
N-CDMA operates at 1.25 MHz. "This is a wide band,
and it's nicely optimized for voice communications," says
Irwin M. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of San
Diego-based Qualcomm Inc. "But, as we evolve to new
services--one being access to the Internet--you may
want to have the capability of having high data rates
supported as well."
Broadband or Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA)
promises to provide N-CDMA's excellent voice quality
and other promising features, such as caller ID and short
messaging, but is being offered as a high-capacity system
for the more robust multimedia applications that users
have been hyped into believing are just around the bend.
The goal of W-CDMA is to provide a platform for all
the blue sky personal communications applications that
subscribers have been told they will see sometime in the
near future, including still image transmission, video
conferencing, large-sized data communications and
basically communicating anything to anybody.
WIDENING THE PIPE
Figuring out how big a wireless pipe is needed to
support services such as real-time videoconferencing,
which requires 384 kbps, is the big question. Current
W-CDMA proposals are suggesting bandwidth in the
5-to-10 MHz range will meet the needs of some of the
more bandwidth-hungry, multimedia-type applications.
However, arriving at a singular scheme to accomplish
that has not really happened, and most of the suggestions
are initially coming from vendors.
YOU CAN'T LIVE ON BANDWIDTH ALONE
One issue W-CDMA faces is whether it provides too
big a pipe for its own good. In metropolitan areas, with
lots of RF interference, there's a question of whether
enough spectrum can be immune for W-CDMA to
work.
"The disadvantage is that it's so wide, it's susceptible to
interference," explains Robert Sanchez, Qualcomm's
director of CDMA wireless projects. "A high-density
noise floor also causes problems because the spectrum is
so wide."
Regarding metropolitan-area interferences' possible
effects on W-CDMA, Sanchez says that "You open
yourself to abuse. The wider you go, the more problems
you have."
Besides RF interference, infrastructure equipment
challenges face W-CDMA. Sanchez says a great deal of
processing "oompf" is needed to process the data rate
W-CDMA promises.
When will cellular/PCS carriers listen to W-CDMA
proposals? PCS CDMA deployments in the United
States have yet to offer paid service to users, and only
cellular CDMA has reached the point of actual
commercial deployment.
Even then, commercial services that are taking their first
baby steps are only providing voice services, and have
yet to offer N-CDMA's paging or short messaging. At
what point will carriers truly be ready to discuss
providing services for what amounts to a Dick Tracy
watch? |
