Ruffian,
This article is a tad older than yours (6+ months old) <g>. I don't recall seeing it here, but it could have been posted before. Regardless, in light of todays events, it is worth a repost since it is quite topical:
WORLD CONGRESS HERALDS RISE OF CDMA
by Clare Haney, IDG News Service\Hong Kong Bureau - June 18, 1999
java.idg.net
HONG KONG (06/18/99) - Mobile phone technology CDMA (code division multiple access) continues to perform strongly around the world, with the notable exception of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the head of the group tasked with promoting the technology said here this week.
By the end of March this year, cdmaOne subscribers worldwide numbered 28.5 million, according to figures from the CDMA Development Group (CDG), an international nonprofit trade organization which evangelizes the leading CDMA technology known as cdmaOne.
Asia-Pacific is the region of the world that has already taken CDMA to its heart, accounting for 63.1 percent of that 28.5 million figure or 18 million subscribers, CDG said. In second position as of the end of March was North America with 30.9 percent of the total CDMA audience worldwide, equivalent to 8.8 million subscribers, followed by the Caribbean and Latin America with 5.4 percent or 1.5 million subscribers. Europe and Middle East and Africa (EMEA) brought up the rear with only 0.6 percent or 200,000 CDMA subscribers, according to CDG figures.
IDG News Service spoke this week to Perry LaForge, CDG's chair and executive director and Terry Yen, the organization's director of Asia-Pacific programs, at the Fourth Annual CDMA World Congress which took place this week at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center. LaForge said he expects worldwide subscriber figures for cdmaOne to hit the 50 million mark by year-end.
IDGNS: Why hasn't CDMA spread quickly in EMEA?
Perry LaForge (PLF): In Western Europe, it's due to an industrial policy which has proliferated throughout the region, that's the key impediment to growth. CDMA is experiencing 350 to 400 percent elsewhere. I'd love Europe to take part.
In Africa, there's limited GSM implementation and some additional CDMA, with some in Nigeria and the third carrier in South Africa to go CDMA.
IDGNS: What about the harmonization proposals between the next version of cdmaOne called cdma2000 and Europe's W-CDMA IMT-2000 which is supposed to lead to the creation of a single worldwide 3G (third-generation) CDMA standard?
PLF: As I've said, the devil is in the details until it's worked out. I remain skeptical, until I see something concrete.
Once the (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute) spectrum allocation is sorted out, there will be a huge opportunity in Europe for CDMA as an overlay or augmentation to existing GSM systems.
IDGNS: How useful to the CDMA cause was the March rapprochement between formerly bitter mobile phone technology rivals GSM advocate L. M. Ericsson Telephone Co. and CDMA backer Qualcomm Inc.?
PLF: Qualcomm/Ericsson helped a bit. Ericsson was a key detractor of CDMA. Four years ago they were saying CDMA won't work. This year, they decided they needed it and needed it so fast that they bought their main rival.
IDGNS: Which country will be first with a 3G system? Japan said it would be first in 2000 or 2001.
PLF: NTT DoCoMo with its version of W-CDMA (wideband CDMA) is bleeding from IDO and DDI's CDMA business. The NTT system is overloaded. The first people to do 3G services for cdmaOne will be the likes of Sprint PCS, GTE and IDO. 1XRTT, the first phase of cdma2000, is well ahead of W-CDMA. The cdma2000 specification is broken into two phases -- 1XRTT and 3XRTT. The acronym relates to how much spectrum is needed to do the services.
IDGNS: So, how long before CDMA becomes a commodity and we don't really talk about it any more?
PLF: In the long term, yes, CDMA will become commoditized, but that's probably nine years out. There will be more of a focus on differentiation. I like to think of CDMA as the "Intel Inside" story. In the same way that you look for Pentium II or Pentium III, you'll look for CDMA as a sign of robust mobile technology.
Realistically, we'll see 3G systems en masse in 200. There are 3G trials at the end of this year from the likes of Telstra, Sprint and Bell Atlantic.
IDGNS: How about CDMA in Asia today? CDMA uptake has been strong in Japan and Korea, where else in the region? Has the Asian economic crisis had any impact on CDMA adoption?
Terry Yen (TY): In Japan on Saturday, DDI Corp. announced it had over 1 million CDMA subscribers without IDO. (Japanese carriers DDI Corp. and IDO Corp. launched a nationwide cdmaOne service in April of this year in Japan. The duo are set to introduce 64K-bits-per-second (bps) packet data by the end of this year.)
PLF: There are four operators in Australia for CDMA. Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd. has a CDMA tender and we have prospects in New Zealand. We've picked up all the key markets, also the major roaming markets in Indonesia and Thailand. In South Korea, Korea Freetel signed up 3 million [M] subscribers over the last 15 months.
We've had a rather robust growth rate in Asia despite the financial crisis. Indonesia and the Philippines slowed down a bit, but roaming throughout the region is on schedule.
TY: Indonesia will be the (CDMA) gateway to Vietnam, Cambodia and Indochina. CAT (Communications Authority of Thailand) and TOT (Telecommunications Organization of Thailand) are on the verge of signing up to CDMA. In Singapore, Mobile One (M1) has jumpstarted 1900MHz CDMA with about 20,000 subscribers. It's continuing to grow, but a bit slower than expected. SingTel (Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.) is holding off on its CDMA tender. Malaysia is one of gaps we have in Asia. They have a TDMA (time division multiple access) system and are predominantly on a very good AMPS (advanced mobile phone service) system.
IDGNS: What was with all the on-and-off again reports about China and its commitment to CDMA that were circulating earlier this year?
PLF: Last year, the Chinese ministry seemed very bullish on CDMA. Then from a politics standpoint, the situation got murkier. At that point, I became quite concerned. The CDMA trials went great, but we hit an impasse with part of the restructuring of (Chinese) ministries taking place.
TY: Reports saying that China was withdrawing its commitment to CDMA came right at the time of the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications, rival mobile technology to CDMA) conference. They weren't true. The other side miscalculated, it had a negative effect on them, not us.
Meanwhile, we repositioned CDMA in a way that the Chinese could see the benefits, more as an answer towards competition. For instance, with GSM, some systems only have a 6MHz spectrum and so can't support growth (of the network).
PLF: The GSM networks are not very capacity-efficient, CDMA is very capacity-efficient. In the Chinese marketplace, their GSM networks are running out of gas in terms of capacity.
IDGNS: How about the Chinese government's recent tightening up of the loophole in one of the country's laws known as "Chinese-Chinese-foreign" (CCF) which had previously permitted foreign telecoms to invest in cooperative joint venture companies? CCF had substantially benefited China United Telecommunications Co. (China Unicom), the Mainland's second-largest carrier which recently joined CDG.
TY: The Chinese government is still discussing CCF. It's being revisited because of negotiations on China's entry into the WTO (World Trade Organization). If China is holding onto the telecom portion of the WTO agreement, CCF will be reinstated.
IDGNS: What about suggestions that CDMA's future in China could be in trouble due to the recent fallout between U.S. and China, both in terms of the reaction to the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and the Cox report on China allegedly illegally acquiring sensitive U.S. technology?
PLF: It's not as big an issue as it's been painted to be. There was speculation that CDMA might be a technology transfer issue.
TY: There's no issue. The Pentagon gave CDMA thumbs up. CDMA got a special mention in the Cox report as not posing a threat for China. The press reports were emotional and overblown.
CDG, based in Costa Mesa, California, can be reached via the Internet at cdg.org.
- Eric - |
