cdma2000 isn’t done just yet, despite the hype over LTE, says the CDMA Development Group.
The CDMA industry advocate says operators continue to deploy new networks and add subscribers, but admits that these also potentially complicate the eventual migration to LTE of the 3G standard.
Tina Radford, the CDG’s CDMA450 and devices director for Southeast Asia, told a summit audience at CommunicAsia that CDMA subs totaled 649 million at the end of 2009, the bulk of them in Asia and Africa.
There were also 18 new cdma2000 networks launched last year, Radford said, despite the CDG’s stated commitment to support LTE as its next-generation technology.
Radford said that CDMA networks have also been busy on the roaming front, although there is far more interest in text and data roaming than voice roaming.
CDMA voice roaming grew just 5% from Q3 2008 to Q3 2009, compared to 36% growth for SMS roaming, 31% for cdma-1x roaming and 53% for EV-DO roaming in the same period.
The CDG has launched several recent initiatives to facilitate roaming between CDMA operators, including its Global Roaming Hub, and its Open Market Handset (OMH) initiative, the latter of which uses the SIM concept to separate handsets from the network.
One catch with the rise of roaming traffic in CDMA networks is that 1x operators planning to migrate to LTE will have to ensure their roaming strategies can migrate along with their networks, Radford said.
“LTE runs on a lot of different frequencies from CDMA, so multi-mode and multi-band handsets will be crucial to supporting their roaming strategies,” she said.
She said the CDG was working with handset makers, as well as 3GPP and 3GPP2, to ensure the specs for such handsets are in place and support backwards compatibility with legacy CDMA networks.
“CDMA isn’t going away anytime soon, so it’s important to support the needs of new CDMA operators in the LTE future,” Radford said.