CDMA roams forward

The international roaming capabilities of GSM have been well-publicized. But there’s a perception that CDMA doesn’t have the same capabilities, said John Martin, a KDDI Mobile Business Center director (www.kddi.com).

“CDMA roams as well as GSM does,” Martin said. During a recent telephone interview, Martin commented on the most recent launch of Global Passport, KDDI’s and its au Group subsidiary’s cdmaOne international roaming service.

Last week, Telecom Mobile ( http://www.telecom.co.nz) in New Zealand launched the service, which initially only supports roaming of international calls originating in Japan. With this launch, the Global Passport service is available in six countries. The service also is being offering in South Korea, Hong Kong, the United States, Australia and Canada.

One significant aspect of the New Zealand launch is that Telecom Mobile introduced cdmaOne services on July 9.

“They just launched CDMA service at the beginning of July, and we roamed with them four weeks later instead of four years later,” Martin said. “Almost instant launching of domestic service and roaming service is a very positive story and something that hopefully you’ll see more of in the CDMA community.”

Martin said KDDI expects to expand into more countries before the end of this year, though he declined to say when or where.

New service options are also appearing. For instance, KDDI now offers access to an e-mail service known as EZweb@mail, as well as international roaming. In mid-July, the company introduced a new cdmaOne handset, Sanyo Electric’s (www.sanyousa.coml) C412SA, which supports both functions.

KDDI doesn’t have firm plans for roaming on next-generation CDMA networks, according to Martin. “As with the other technologies, you’ll see a continuing evolution of roaming into the higher bandwidth and packet data services in coming years,” he said. “We’re certainly working on that, but at this time we have no specific announcements to make.”

However, Martin wants it known that there is an international community of CDMA players committed to expanding CDMA roaming. The biggest example of that are the international roaming memorandums of understanding signed between China Telecom and 13 other CDMA carriers in June, he said. The participants included Bell Mobility (www.mobility.com), Verizon International (www.verizon.com/international/) and KDDI.