Korean deployment of new data card offers glimpse of 1X speeds

Korean carrier Korea Telecom Freetel ( www.ktf.com/eng/main.jsp ), which provides CDMA 1X service in six major Korean cities, deployed GTRAN Wireless’ DotSurfer 153K family of PCMCIA Type II data cards two weeks ago. GTRAN Wireless (www.gtranwireless.com) first announced the product line in March at CTIA in Las Vegas ( www.wow-com.com ).

By making the cards available for 800MHz, 1700MHz and 1900MHz GTRAN has addressed the different operating bands in the Americas and Asia. The card was demonstrated last month at Supercomm in Atlanta on a Compaq iPaq (www.compaq.com) over Lucent’s cdma2000 1X Flexent test network.

“At this time, our product is being tested in a lot of field trials on infrastructure here (in America). But we are waiting for the carriers to deploy 1X,” said Deepak Mehrotra, GTRAN Wireless president and CEO. GTRAN engineers are currently testing the new data cards at Lucent’s labs (www.lucent.com). Once U.S. carrier deals are finalized, subscribers who purchase a DotSurfer 153K for their laptop or PDA will experience actual throughput speeds between 80kb/s and 120kb/s. Speeds will vary due to a user’s position and activity.

“It’s a combination of mobile vs. stationary. As you get into a car or train, it gets closer to the 80kb/s side,” Mehrotra said. “But walking with your PDA, you would get 100-110kb/s. Then if you’re sitting at home or in your office, we’ve seen 120kb/s and higher. The networks we’re on in Korea are not very loaded, because it’s just been launched. But with loading effects, that lowers the (rates) a bit.”

With the exception of wireless multimedia applications – which are few and far between these days – early adopters of wireless data cards will barely notice the difference between GTRAN’s 64K DotSurfer and the 153K DotSurfer release in Korea two weeks ago. Wireless carriers, on the other hand, will gain precious network capacity and new billing functionality, Mehrotra said.

“The customer doesn’t really look for speed,” he said. “Once the data rate is above 70-80kb/s, you can’t tell the difference (compared to a higher rate) unless you’re downloading video. From the network provider’s point of view, from 95B to 1X, they get more capacity. But they also are in process of changing billing from time-based to packet-based. So from a consumer’s point of view, they will get ‘eat-as-much-as-you-can-data’ for the same price. But really, the applications have to be developed to (take full advantage) of the card’s capability. The typical first customers are business guys. So if you can get them a good connection to their corporate data, they’re happy.”

Here in the United States, GTRAN faces a depressed telecom sector and tight capital markets. But Mehrotra is optimistic that GTRAN’s foreign experience will serve it well in negotiations with the U.S. wireless carriers currently testing its new 153K data card.

“CDMA itself is a pretty complicated air interface,” he said. “We have developed considerable experience from our deployment in Korea. Hopefully, carriers here will find that experience valuable in working with us on similar deployments over the next couple of months.”

GTRAN also is testing Type II data cards for GPRS networks. Recently, GTRAN began conducting joint trials of GPRS-enabled data cards with GSM carriers. Although it hasn’t been publicly announced, Mehrotra said GTRAN would soon release a data card for HDR — or 1XEV, an enhanced 1X technology Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com) developed for the further evolution toward 3G.

“We hope to have leading edge (data card) products for all markets by the end of this year,” Mehrotra said.

GTRAN Wireless was spun off from GTRAN in May. The other division, GTRAN (www.gtran.com), focuses on fiber optics. Both companies have headquarters in California. GTRAN Wireless makes data cards for wireless access to laptops, PDAs and other devices based on IS-95B, 1X-EV, GPRS, cdma2000, and WCDMA air interface technologies. The company has product design centers in Westlake Village and San Diego, CA; Denver, CO; Calgary, AB, Canada; Seoul, Korea; and Hsin-Chu, Taiwan.