US
: At this week's Futurecom conference, the CDMA Development Group
(CDG) reported that the Latin American region continues to be CDMA
technology's fastest-growing market. There are 42 CDMA operators in
22 countries and nearly one out of four wireless subscribers, or 50
million consumers, uses the technology today. If the subscriber base
continues to grow at its current rate of 38% per year, the CDG expects
to see over 70 million CDMA users by 2009.
"CDMA2000(R)
was the first 3G technology introduced in Latin America and today
it serves more than 30% of the CDMA users in the region," said
Celedonio von Wuthenau, regional director for Latin America for the
CDG. "CDMA2000 has capabilities beyond delivering superior quality
voice; it is the leading platform for advanced data services in Latin
America and worldwide."
The CDMA2000 evolution
path offers competitive advantages to operators in high-speed data
capabilities, cost of delivery and time-to-market. Through in-band
migration, operators have been able to deploy CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO
and introduce enhanced voice services, broadband high-speed data,
and advanced multimedia services rapidly and cost-effectively. CDMA2000
1X delivers the highest voice capacity of any commercially available
3G technology with data speeds comparable to WCDMA. It has enabled
operators to aggressively drive voice traffic and introduce data services
such as picture and video messaging, web-browsing, games and location-based
services.
With data speeds of up
to 2.4 Mbps in a single channel, 1xEV-DO is the fastest wireless data
technology deployed today, and will outperform HSDPA (High Speed Downlink
Packet Access) when that technology is commercially introduced in
2006-2007. CDMA2000 1xEV-DO has allowed operators to drive data ARPU
through rich multimedia services, including TV broadcasts, audio downloads
and 3D gaming, and to offer broadband Internet access, in some cases
competing with landline broadband providers. The next generation of
the CDMA2000 standard, 1xEV-DO Rev A, builds on the Rev 0 capabilities
and offers VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) and significantly higher
data rates (3.1 Mbps in the forward link and up to 1.8 Mbps in the
reverse link in a single channel) allowing operators to further differentiate
their services offerings, while reducing the cost of delivery.
To date, 30 operators
have migrated to CDMA2000 in Latin America: of those 29 use CDMA2000
1X, and seven have deployed CDMA2000 1xEV-DO. Four more 1X and eight
1xEV-DO networks are currently being deployed.