3G Technology Race Growing More Competitive
The race between 3G technologies is becoming much more competitive, with Verizon Wireless’s EVDO high-speed data offering no longer the clear leader, Mike Iandolo, Lucent vp- mobility product management, said Thurs. at Goldman Sach’s Technology Investment Symposium.
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“It’s now becoming a much tighter race,” Iandolo said. “Cingular has now announced that they're going to be deploying HSDPA [High Speed Downlink Packet Access] and when you start getting into the implementation of HSDPA versus EVDO and both of their evolutions you can argue one way or the other which one is ahead at a given time, but they're very comparable in terms of data rates and capabilities.” They offer similar capabilities to support both wireless VoIP and high-speed data, he said.
“Just as when Verizon announced their intent to deploy EVDO, it caused a lot of activity in the market I would say that now that Cingular’s intent to deploy HSDPA has further fanned the competitive flames,” Iandolo said.
Lucent is also seeing significant growth and interest in CDMA 450, its products for use in the 450 MHz spectrum, designed especially for countries transitioning to digital wireless service from Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) 450 analog service. Iandolo predicted that the 450 MHz market will soon be worth several hundred millions of dollars per year.
“The 450 has been, over the last several years, almost flying under the radar screen,” Iandolo said. “The momentum now is growing significantly. You've seen other vendors introduce products in the 450 space. We see in the near future the opportunity really still playing in the eastern European theater… The interesting play as well is western Europe and using 450 as an opportunity to provide data capabilities.” Iandolo said the impediment has been rollout of a wide variety of terminals, especially compared to other bands and technologies: “As we have seen in general once you start seeing more operators making commitments to deploy it will work out where the terminal makers will be willing to make the investment.”
Iandolo also told the investors that while Lucent hasn’t yet made huge investments in China, the world’s largest market, the company’s presence there continues to grow. “At the end of the day the operators there are going to look at how well we can help their network work,” he said. Lucent is the largest manufacturer of CDMA infrastructure internationally, accounting for 41% of the $7.4 billion market in 2003, according to a Dell'Oro Group study.