CDG unveils Ultra Mobile Broadband

The CDMA Development Group is dumping its old acronym-laden monikers for future technologies and trying out something snazzier for CDMA’s next evolutionary stage. It has selected the name “Ultra Mobile Broadband” as the official title of CDMA 1xEV-DO Revision C, the next iteration of the long technology line.

The CDG appears to be trying to keep pace with CDMA’s technology rivals, which have all adopted more palatable monikers for their technology lines. The IEEE’s 802.16d and 802.16e standards became WiMAX, and the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has dumped names like Super 3G and 3.9G in favor of a Long Term Evolution, though in reality the technology is only a few years around the corner. Like LTE, Ultra Mobile Broadband is expected to be a disruptive technology that won’t quite mesh with CDMA’s so-far smooth upward migration path. It will use Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) schemes over broad channels rather than code division schemes over small channels, making CDMA in its name obsolete.

The 3GPP2--the 3GPP’s CDMA equivalent--is expected to publish the new Ultra standard in the second quarter of next year, setting the pace for the first commercial equipment in early 2009.