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China Telecom is one of the cellcos which have stated the intention of deploying CDMA EV-DO Rev B, which is carving out a role in supporting heavy duty data services in emerging markets, in the face of previous speculation that it would not hit commercial reality because of the accelerated rise of LTE. The CDMA Development Group (CDG) argues that there is still plenty of growth left in the technology, especially in emerging economies – where spectrum will not be available for LTE for years but there is a requirement for affordable data – and in bands geared to rural access, notably 450MHz, where CDMA is the only major technology.
Four operators have launched commercial services using EV-DO Rev B – KDDI in Japan, in its 2.1GHz band; Smart Telecom of Indonesia and Pakistan Telecom in 1.9GHz; and 450MHz player ice.net/Net1, in both Sweden and Denmark. A further 10 carriers have made commitments to deploy Rev B, only one in a band above 1GHz (LG U+ in Korea, in 1.7GHz. China Telecom and Wana of Morocco will use the technology in 800MHz, and the other seven will all roll out in 450MHz. They are Cosmote and Romtelecom in Romania, G-Mobile Mongolia, MTS Ukraine, PTK Centertel in Poland, SkyLink in Russia and Zapp in Portugal.
Its commitment to Rev B will only strengthen China Telecom’s powerful position in directing the CDMA agenda, which it assumed once Verizon Wireless turned to LTE in preference to the planned 4G upgrade for CDMA carriers, UMB – effectively signing the death warrant for that platform. Telecom then took the crown as most influential CDMA carrier when its 3G roll-out produced a big boost for the technology in 2008-10.
Some vendors created products specifically for the cellco. In 2009, Qualcomm SVP Cristiano Amon said: “We think 3G in China could boost the CDMA2000 ecosystem ... We are moving forward with all of our R&D for China, specifically CDMA2000. We are introducing a new suite of products.” For instance, Qualcomm introduced multiband 450MHz/700MHz chips for the entry level CDMA series, which was previously available only in a single-band 800MHz implementation, on request from China Telecom."