CDMA World Congress: CDG announces roaming standard

The CDMA Development Group today released specifications for the CDMA Packet Data Roaming Exchange (CRX), a standardized set of technology guidelines intended to enable global roaming across CDMA2000 and GPRS networks.

The 127 million global CDMA subscribers are spread across 100 different carriers, none of which can pass a subscriber from network to network unless a specific one-on-one roaming agreement has been negotiated between carriers. CDG officials said the CRX spec is designed to bring a single standards-based roaming solution to all CDMA carriers similar to the standardized roaming elements of GSM. The specification goes beyond voice to include messaging, packet data and interconnection. It also provides for data clearing, settlement and service scheduling as well as migration to inter-standard CDMA2000/GPRS packet data roaming.

The CDG approved the final CRX specification and announced it at the CDMA World Congress in Hong Kong, where several other CDMA vendors unveiled new products this week.

Qualcomm announced its enhanced multimedia platform chipsets are in 30 handset designs currently under development and the first terminals with the technology will be available in mid-2005. The Mobile Station Modem (MSM) 6150 and 6550 chipsets are designed to handle heavy multimedia usage on 3G networks, providing the higher processing capacity and lower power consumption needed to support high resolution screens, 3D gaming, photo quality digital imaging and high-resolution video streaming and video telephony. Geared toward CDMA 1X and particularly the new-generation 1X EV-DO devices, the chipsets are geared toward high-end users in East Asia and North America. Qualcomm, however, didn’t reveal which vendors were incorporating the silicon into their handsets.

Agere Systems revealed its own high-end multimedia platform in Hong Kong. The former integrated circuits arm of Lucent announced a multimedia framework and baseband silicon designed for GPRS and EDGE phones. Agere said today the select vendors are sampling the technology.

Airvana announced it had landed a new carrier customer for its EV-DO technology, Hamilton Telecommunications, a small carrier in Nebraska. The base station vendor--which supplies the core EV-DO technology for Nortel’s CDMA 3G infrastructure--said Hamilton would use the network rollout to bring broadband services to underserved areas in the vicinity of Platte and Grand Island, Neb. Airvana did not reveal the value of the contract.

In CDMA news unrelated to the World Congress, Nokia today made further headway into the U.S. CDMA market, announcing Virgin Mobile would offer a Nokia handset over its MVNO network in early 2005. Both Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS both offer Nokia handsets today.