CDMA operators need to take cue from GSM world, Giga

Many of these arrangements
involve a limited number of cities and may be unidirectional – that is, they
are not reciprocal arrangements. This means that North
American-based users may be able to use their mobile device
in some cities and a small number of countries, but users from those countries
cannot assume they will be able to use their phone in
North America.

Based on information on roaming made
available by the CDMA Development Group, we provide an analysis of the extent of
bilateral international roaming arrangements involving CDMA mobile operators.

The leading CDMA operators
involved in international roaming initiatives include SK
Telecom of Korea, Verizon of
the United States, Hutchison of
Hong Kong, Iusacell of
Mexico, Telecom Mobile of New
Zealand and KDDI of
Japan.

Giga believes that CDMA
operators interested in tapping more deeply into the corporate user community
need to take a lesson from the GSM world and get busy
negotiating international roaming agreements – including reciprocal
CDMA-CDMA arrangements and inter-standard arrangements that would allow CDMA to
GSM/GPRS.

A potential leader for
spurring wider adoption of international roaming arrangements involving CDMA
operators is TSI, which provides protocol translation-type
services to mobile carriers and standardized roaming agreements.
Giga believes that one of the main reasons that GSM-based mobile technologies
are so pervasive (72 percent of mobile networks worldwide
use the GSM standard) is the work by the GSM Association to promote
standardized roaming to its membership of 691 carriers operating networks
covering 95 percent of the world’s population

Recommendations

Companies that have regular
and frequent international travelers using CDMA-based mobile services in their
home market (e.g., North America, South Korea and Latin America)
should ask their service provider what plans it has to
expand international roaming. If their mobile operator is unable to provide
these plans, then the customer should consider moving
frequent international travelers to a GSM-based network to achieve the broadest
international coverage.