'Broadband penetration is low in India'

In telecommunication field, GSM technology has been in the forefront of mobile communication and has created a whole new ecosystem within itself.

However, no one would have ever imagined that a novel technology like CDMA will evolve, survive, compete against the highly accepted GSM technology and also offer a new option to the mobile users today.

In fact, the evolution of CDMA technology in Indian context has played a major role in the expansion of mobile communication across the country. In expansion of CDMA technology world over, the CDMA Development Group (CDG) is very active and it continuously works in propagating the use of CDMA technology.

Perry La Forge, founder, executive director and chairman of CDG talks to Pankaj Maru of CyberMedia News and discusses various aspects of CDG's role world over, limitations of CDMA technology, growth of CDMA platform in India and the new concept of international roaming hubs. Excerpts:

What is the role that CDMA Development Group plays globally?

We are a trade association, so we work with operators, manufactures, chip suppliers and handset makers. Our role is really to advocate the growth of CDMA around the world. We do this in a variety of ways – we do it from regulatory standpoint, we do work it from advocacy standpoint and also we work from technology standpoint.

We are a member of the Standards organization, we are marketing partners of Third Generation Partnership Projects (3GPP), Third Generation Partnership Projects 2 (3GPP2) and Long Term Evolution (LTE). We work with operators to develop requirements for developing technology and then we implement those requirements in the Standards' body.

And there are other specific initiatives like the handset pricing, making sure that pricing for high, low and medium level handsets comes down and to ensure that we have a wide variety of devices available when we implement new technologies like Evolution Data Optimized (EVDO), roaming hubs to facilitate roaming services for operators and so forth.

Though CDMA platform is used across the globe, do you see any technological issues or limitation of the CDMA technology?

There's always the need to improve and work on some areas; however, it is different for different markets. In India, the biggest issue is spectrum availability to roll out broadband services is very important. There's lack of clarity on spectrum among CDMA and GSM operators.

We believe spectrum availability will not only stimulate more devices but will also focus on operators and stimulate the growth of CDMA and GSM operators. It will help to increase the broadband penetration in India.

In other markets, the issues are about how should we improve technology efficiency. We are working on standards, increasing the capacity of CDMA dramatically, which we call CDMA 1x advance and also EVDO. We continue to make improvements in technology and make sure that we have a wide variety of devices available at lower cost price.

Has the Indian market matured enough on the CDMA front compared to other markets?

I think, we are just beginning here. If you look at broadband penetration on the whole of Indian market, its very low and I think CDMA technology itself is very well suited to allow wireless broadband connectivity. And since broadband connectivity is low, wireless is the natural ambiguity to broadband content.

There can be low-cost netbooks embedded with wireless connectivity or can have low-cost smart phones or iconic devices with wireless connectivity. So I think there's a scenario that provides great market opportunity in India.

Could you explain the idea of setting up international roaming hubs?

The idea is that there are many CDMA operators who want roaming facility in many of countries. But for them it's very hard to go to individual countries and negotiate agreements and contracts.

So we created this international roaming hubs where the operators can have a single agreement with the hub operator and get many spokes after that they can have roaming facility with other operators and networks. Hence it helps to facilitate roaming service rapidly.