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The
inventor of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Qualcomm
is planning to set up its research and development centre
in India. Qualcomm, which created news last month by investing
$200 million for a four percent stake in Reliance Infocom
is also scouting for more investment opportunities in India.
According to Qualcomm chairman and CEO Dr Irwin Mark Jacobs,
in New Delhi for the Convergence India 2002 conference, “The
investments will either be a strategic decision—to expand
the usage of CDMA technologies or a long term financial investment.”
Since telecom usage is heavily dependent on availability of
localised applications relevant to the users, Qualcomm is
also “exploring the option of investing in small software
companies that wish to write applications for CDMA,”
added Dr Jacobs. Of the $400 million worldwide fund set up
by Qualcomm to make such investments, up to $5 million might
be made available for investing in such software companies
in India, he said.
Meanwhile, the Qualcomm R&D centre will be set up with
an investment of $20 million. “If Qualcomm goes it alone
in setting up the R&D centre, then we will make the entire
investment, else we will share it with our partners,”
said Dr Jacob.
Dr Jacob also talked about the introduction of dual mode cellular
handsets—which will work in both GSM and CDMA networks.
According to him, “The kits are going to be out in the
next 12 months and the commercial production will start by
the middle of next year.”
These inter-operable dual mode phones operate in both CDMA
and GSM mode, without the network operators having to make
any changes. The phones will have a User Information Module
(UIM) card, which is the same as the Subscriber Information
Mode (SIM) card used in GSM handsets.
In fact, inter-operability between CDMA and GSM networks had
not been taking off because prohibitive costs were involved
in upgrading the two networks to a common platform. Because
of this, roaming of a CDMA subscriber on a GSM network and
vice versa was not possible till very recently.
However, the GSM 1X phone overlays CDMA 2000 1x (3G CDMA technology)
on existing GSM systems so that they work on the standard
GSM interfaces. “In fact, once these phones are available
it will enable GSM operators to provide CDMA services by allocating
some spectrum for offering CDMA services,” he explained.
He said that GSM operators are excited about the prospect,
since CDMA offers higher data transmission rates of up to
2MB as compared to the 15 kbps throughput available on the
general packet radio service (GPRS) overlays on GSM. GPRS
is the only packet data transmission technology available
in GSM now.
Another advantage is that CDMA can support up to five times
the customers as GSM on the same bandwidth, besides providing
GSM service providers a migration path to 3G, said Dr Jacobs.
However, till this happens, CDMA manufacturers have put together
a stop gap arrangement to facilitate roaming for GSM subscribers
in CDMA networks.
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