Korea, Japan, China leading the way
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CDMA penetration rising
By Edison D. Ong
HONG KONG — CDMA2000 subscribers are growing at a rate of more than one million per month worldwide.
In March, they accounted for more than 98 percent of the total number of third-generation (3G) subscribers in the world. With additional deployments planned this year, cdma2000 will continue to lead in delivering 3G.
Providing a big boost to Code Division Multiple Access’s (CDMA) status in the wireless arena is the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) official recognition of cdma2000 1xEV-DO as a 3G standard.
CDMA2000 is the first 3G technology to be commercially deployed in the world. The world’s inaugural 3G system was launched (by SK Telecom) in South Korea in 2000.
CDMA2000, the common name for IMT-2000 CDMA Multi-Carrier, is designed to operate in all existing allocated spectrum for wireless telecommunications, including analog, cellular, PCS and IMT-2000 bands. There are at least 14 cdma2000 networks currently in deployment.
Lots of subscribers
The CDMA Development Group (CDG) reported that worldwide CDMA (cdmaOne and cdma2000 1x) subscribers surpassed 111 million at the end of 2001, a 38 percent year-to-year growth over the 80 million recorded at the end of 2000.
The largest CDMA subscriber base is in North America, where there are nearly 53 million users, representing more than 60 percent of the total number of subscribers in the region. Latin America reached more than 22 million subscribers, a 39 percent growth over the past year, and CDMA penetration in Asia grew by nearly 44 million subscribers.
On the other hand, cdma2000 1DX celebrated one year of full commercial service in October 2001 and has over 8 million subscribers as of April 2002.
“Commercially introduced in 1995, CDMA technology quickly became the world’s fastest-growing wireless technologies,” said Irvin Jacobs, chairman and CEO, Qualcomm, Inc.
Last Month, CDG announced that there were more than 12 million CDMA subscribers worldwide at the end of the first quarter of 2002. Of the 12 million, nearly eight million were using CDMA20001x, the leading 3G technology, The CDMA subscriber base has grown by 30 million, or 33 percent in the past year.
Using this statistics, delegates to the CDMA-focused 3G World Congress in Hong Hong gathered to map out their business strategies for the coming months. The conference explored the opportunities in the marketplace for next generation systems based on CDMA.
This year’s annual seventh 3G World Congress discussed 3G CDMA deployments, services and applications, and future technology developments.
Plus points for CDMA
Proponents of CDMA said CDMA is fast becoming a favored cellular technology in Asia because of:
- the existing nationwide CDMA deployments in Japan and South Korea
- the recent adoption by China Unicom. The decision by China last year to build a nationwide CDMA network means with the addition of China, there will be a large scale production of CDMA handsets.
- The easy migration path to 3G. Part of the renewed appeal for CDMA is its flexibility, offering full 3G high speed services.
“Asia’s largest CDMA networks are in place or planned throughout South Korea, at China Unicom and Japan’s KDDI, Telekom Malaysia, Hutchison in Hong Kong and Telstar and Orange (Hutchison) in Australia. Telecom New Zealand is installing CDMA 1x and interest has been expressed in the system in Indonesia and India. Malaysia and Thailand are planning an initial provisioning of 2 million lines each.
“In India, one of the operators is talking about five million CDMA lines. In India, two operators, Tata and Reliance, are showing high interest in developing CDMA networks. Telekom Malaysia is currently deploying a nationwide CDMA 1x network supplied by Motorola. A similar network is also being rolled out in Thailand,” a conference report said.
Another report said mobile operators in South Korea and Japan are taking full advantage of the technological capabilities of 3G cdma2000 for advanced wireless services. With four operators now offering commercial cdma2000 1x services, the markets currently have approximately 10 million 3G subscribers.
The case of the Philippines
In the Philippines, much remains to be seen on whether or not cdma can make a comeback. It will be an uphill battle with GSM/GPRS, the technology embraced by carriers like Smart Communications Inc. and Globe Telecommunications. Pilipino Telephone Corp. (Piltel), which began with cdma technology in its Mobiline cellular phone service in the past, has since embraced GSM with its Talk ’N Text brand.
Add to this — last year, their competitor Digital Telecommunications (Digitel) signed a $200 million contract with Alcatel for a GSM 1800 cellular mobile network project.
PLDT’s Wireless Group, led by Smart and Piltel, had more than 3.5 million subscribers (as of December 31 2000), establishing it as the largest and fastest growing in the country. This number is more than the two million fixed line customers of PLDT.
On average, Smart and Piltel signed up one new GSM customer every 13 seconds during 2000, or more than 2.5 million for the year as a whole, said PLDT chairman Antonio Cojuangco in the company’s Annual Report for 2000.
Smart’s capital expenditures of R14.6 billion were almost entirely devoted to the expansion and upgrading of its nationwide GSM network to meet the increasing demand for its wireless services, added Manuel Pangilinan, PLDT president and CEO.
Despite this, Nortel Networks executives still saw a window of opportunity for CDMA (although very small). For instance, unless Piltel has given up its cdma program, then it will be worth perusing. Another company is Bayan Telecommunications which is in dire need of a revenue stream. It has yet to play in the text or SMS messaging arena.
BARRIERS
Plans to roll out ultra fast third-generation (3G) mobile services are being delayed in many countries, according to the Summer 2002 issue of Pulse, a newsletter for telecoms specialists published by the Taylor Nelson Sofres Group, a market information provider.
Penetration, viability and the profitability of telcos, handset/device manufacturers and content providers alike is dependent upon being early on the market with applications that satisfy customer needs and drive critical mass take-up and on-going usage, James Fergusson wrote.
Skeptics also cited unsuitable terminals and applications as main barriers to a rapid rollout.
“We have our own GSM network and the important thing to us is revenues, not network. CDMA 1x offers high speeds but the same can also be provided by GPRS and the user experience is about the same,” Li Rong, deputy CTO, China Mobile Hong Kong, told Asian Mobilenews.
Taiwan Cellular Corp chairman Jack Sun said the prerequisites for a 3G network to succeed are the combination of infrastructure, handsets, and content. “What we are lacking is content. If Taiwan is going to successfully develop 3G network, the content industry must boom,” he stated. |
