The CDMA Development Group (CDG) (www.cdg.org) reported that KDDI is strengthening its technological and differentiated services lead in Japan by upgrading its CDMA20001xEV-DO (CDMA 1X WIN) network to Rev A.
This will enable KDDI to introduce delay sensitive applications, VoIP-based video telephony, and other real-time, symmetric and concurrent transmission voice and data applications with quality of service (QoS) features, while evolving its core network to a totally IP-based platform.
Rev A will give KDDI a one-to-two year time-to-market advantage in continuing to offer more compelling and better performing voice, multimedia and broadband data services to its consumer and enterprise customers.
KDDI has already announced the availability of two stylish Rev A handsets from Toshiba, the W47T and DRAPE, to support the commercial launch of its advanced broadband technology services by December 2006.
The Rev A network upgrade also will provide KDDI with a smooth upgrade path to EV-DO Revisions B and C to enable ultra broadband services within the next few years.
'We are pleased to see KDDI continue to embrace the competitive advantages that CDMA2000 has to offer,' said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG. 'A backward and forward compatible evolution path is one of CDMA2000's strongest differentiators, and enables operators to sustain a significant market advantage over competing technologies. By folding in larger bandwidth implementations, OFDM-based air link technologies, and advanced antenna techniques, the CDMA2000 roadmap will sustain this competitive advantage, while retaining existing economies of scale and minimizing capital and operating expenditures.'
Hideo Okinaka, vice president and general manager, Technical Standards and Spectrum Division of KDDI, stated, 'KDDI will go on with CDMA and continue to develop it. CDMA can accommodate almost every type of service that our market would demand or we would be able to imagine. With further enhancements to the CDMA2000 roadmap, we expect this situation to remain so for the foreseeable future.'
EV-DO Rev A has been standardized by the Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) and has been enhanced to support a wide variety of symmetric, delay-sensitive, real-time, and concurrent VoIP and broadband data applications.
Rev A's most compelling benefit will be an increase in uplink speeds up to 1.8 Mbps and downlink speeds up to 3.1 Mbps, as compared to EV-DO Release 0 that supports speeds up to 153.6 kbps and 2.4Mbps, respectively.
According to Fumio Watanabe, executive director and general manager of KDDI's Technology Planning and Development Division, 'HSDPA offers benefits similar to the EV-DO Release 0 service that we launched three years ago, in 2003.