4 Telecom Majors Team Up To Develop Cutting-Edge Tech
Four of the worlds leading telecom equipment manufacturers Motorola, Lucent Technologies, Nortel and Qualcomm yesterday announced plans to jointly develop specifications for wideband code division multiple access (CDMA)-based wireless communication systems.
The majors, whose revenues put together are close to Rs 270,000 crore ($75 billion) revenues, made this announcement here yesterday at the Second Annual CDMA World Congress.
Wideband CDMA systems represent the new frontier in wireless communications and are being developed with the high-capacity requirements for data transmission in mind. Cellular networks in advanced countries (like the EC) get some 5-10 per cent of their revenues from subscribers using handsets to receive and send faxes, electronic mails and log into the Internet. This percentage of revenues is expected to increase as the use of wireless data services accelerates.
The current bandwidth (indicative of capacity) of 1.2 Mhz supported by CDMA systems is not expected to be sufficient as the use of cellular phones for data applications increases. We are looking at chunks (bandwidth) of 5 Mhz, John Major, president of the wireless infrastructure division, Qualcomm, said here.
The North American CDMA is a communication modulation technology dominated by US firms companies, however, made it clear that they did not envisage a joint research and development project under the wideband CDMA initiative. Said Matt Desch, president, wireless networks of Nortel, We will not have a joint R&D agreement. This is a statement and intent of cooperation.
We will be working through standard bodies (to develop the specifications), he said. The Motorola-Lucent-Nortel-Qualcomm wideband standard will be based on the IS-95 standard of the Telecommunications Industries Association (TIA) of the US. The IS-95 standard details the operating specifications such as voice quality, capacity and coverage for CDMA systems.