Telecom CDMA EVDO expansion

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Telecom CDMA EVDO expansion

freitasm

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#6079 23-Dec-2005 19:43

That was under the radar for me, and only saw the press release today. Posted in the news section.

Nice to see a good list of towns being covered with CDMA EV-DO now, and some of these (Napier, Martinbourogh, Carterton) I go quite frequently. Taupo was in the previous coverage area, but I miss Greytown in the list.

Hmmm. Still waiting for CDMA packet data roaming to the USA though. No chance of having this before the 3 January 06, I guess.

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Jama

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#25265 23-Dec-2005 20:01

You are right it wont be ready by Jan 06 but it is coming

sbiddle

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#25268 23-Dec-2005 20:42

I think Kevin Kenrick is getting a little confused himself however!

"Mr Kenrick says EV-DO is the fastest growing 3G technology in the world, and worldwide subscribers recently passed 185 million."

The CDG only say there are 18 million EV-DO customers and 35 million WCDMA customers.

COSTA MESA, Calif., November 9, 2005 — The CDMA Development Group (CDG) (www.cdg.org) announced today that the nu mber of CDMA2000® subscribers surpassed 200 million worldwide in September, only 18 months since the industry celebrated the 100-million milestone in June 2004. The 1xEV-DO subscriber base expanded to 18 million users.

From another news release this week:

According to a new survey by GSA - the Global mobile Suppliers Association, six WCDMA networks have launched commercial services so far this month, pushing the total number to 100 networks in 42 countries. This compares with 60 commercial networks in 28 countries at end 2004. It means that over two-thirds of the WCDMA license holders worldwide have launched 3G services.

WCDMA networks today are serving over 40 million subscribers, an increase of 140% since end 2004, and achieving an average monthly growth exceeding 2.1 million subscribers.

I know it's being picky but Telecom seem to love quoting incorrect statistics, I still recall them claiming that DAMPS was the fastest growing Digital Mobile standard in the world when GSM's growth was about 20x that of DAMPS! :-)

johnr

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#25269 23-Dec-2005 20:50

GSM/3GSM gets round %82 of new wireless subscribers.

I have no idea where Kevin gets his figures from.

freitasm

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#25270 23-Dec-2005 21:14

He probably was counting CDMA2000, which is 1xRTT and EV-DO - in this case the total subscriber number is 200 million.

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johnr

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#25271 23-Dec-2005 21:21

This still would not make it the fastest growing

freitasm

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#25272 23-Dec-2005 21:22

johnr: GSM/3GSM gets round %82 of new wireless subscribers.

I have no idea where Kevin gets his figures from.

The number of subscribers added on 3GSM doesn't impact on the total number of CDMA2000 subscribers. It's more than 200 million. CDMA EV-DO is 18 million, which means more than 182 million use CDMA 1xRTT.

But, again, GSM/3GSM getting 82% of the new subscribers doesn't mean there's no growth on CDMA camp, and it doesn't change the total CDMA2000 numbers in any way.

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freitasm

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#25273 23-Dec-2005 21:23

johnr: This still would not make it the fastest growing

That's why I didn't post the quote on Geekzone - I don't copy the press releases as they come, because I know there are lots of "spins" on the info the companies pass...

I think sbiddle got the quote from the press release on the TNZ site, is that right?

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sbiddle

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#25276 23-Dec-2005 22:10

No. The story on Geekzone you linked to in the first post has his quote.

One thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned is how many customers there are who are not on 1X or EV-DO. Just because the network might be 1X or EV-DO capable doesn't mean that every handset is. There are plenty of people in NZ with early CDMA handsets - should they be classed as EV-DO customers just because Telecom's network is EV-DO capable? How many EV-DO customers do Telecom NZ actually have?

I guess the great thing about statistics is you can make almost any conclusion you want out of them. There is no disputing CDMA/EV-DO is doing well but saying EV-DO is growing faster than WCDMA is just total crap. From looking at a few sites WCDMA growth and total CDMA growth are virtually identical over the 6 months to September (WCDMA might be about 1 million ahead or a couple of million behind depending on who you believe) but because of the smaller base WCDMA has grown 140% in the past year vs CDMA which has had about a 50% increase.