14 DAY TRIAL // China Telecom Corp. Ltd., one of the three large wireless carriers in China, seems set to prove that it can become the largest CDMA operator in the world. It seems that the wireless services provider has already started CDMA EV-DO Rev. B trials, and that it recently unveiled a series of details on its growth estimations.
The Chinese wireless carrier accounted for a large number of CDMA users at the end of May, as it reported 71.5 million CDMA customers at that time. According to the company, it plans on adding even more 3G users in the near future. According to a recent article on Light Reading, Qi Bi, CTO of China Telecom's Beijing Research Institute, said recently that the carrier is set to “grow to 100 million subscribers and become the world's largest CDMA operator within a year.”
Currently, the leading CDMA wireless carrier in the world is Verizon Wireless, which reportedly had a number of 87.8 million retail CDMA customers at the end of March. In case China Telecom's plans run smoothly, the company should become the largest CDMA operator in the near future, something that should also drive the 3G technology upwards, despite an industry trend of moving towards LTE.
China Telecom's plans also include an upgrade of its 3G network to EV-DO Rev. B, and Bi reportedly said the carrier is pleased with recent trials. “The early indications are that Rev. B is mature, and most network performance measurements are in line with our expectations,” said Bi. “But we are still evaluating the data and considering what to do next.” The operator is conducting trials with leading infrastructure vendors, including Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei.
According to the CDMA Development Group (CDG), only two commercial CDMA EV-DO Rev. B networks have been deployed on the globe, one of them in Indonesia, by PT Smart Telecom, based on equipment from ZTE Corp., and the other in Bali, from Qualcomm Inc. China Telecom's Bi also said that CMDA operators seem interested in growing the Rev. B ecosystem.