CDMA2000 Passes Subscriber Milestone

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) has reported that the CDMA2000 global subscriber base surpassed 50 million in May 2003. There are 53 commercial networks in 29 countries on six continents and approximately 17 more networks are scheduled for deployment in the second half of 2003. The number of CDMA2000 subscribers grew by 18 million in the first five months of 2003, and account for more than 99% of the total 3G market.

KDDI continues to lead in subscriber growth in Japan, primarily because of the strong customer demand for CDMA2000 services. KDDI is adding an average of 600,000 CDMA2000 subscribers per month and expects that 90% of its customers will have migrated to its CDMA2000 network by March 2004. Asia is the largest market for CDMA2000 with nearly 30 million subscribers, but the North American market is growing rapidly, claiming over 20 million users. Latin America leads in number of deployments with 19 commercial networks in 12 countries throughout the region.

Several TDMA operators, including BellSouth Colombia, BellSouth Guatemala and Midwest Wireless in the U.S., migrated to CDMA2000 in the last three months.

"CDMA2000 has taken a commanding lead in the global 3G market," said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG. "The CDG expects CDMA2000 to sustain its dominant position as new networks are deployed and carriers continue to rapidly roll out services."

A number of operators are migrating to CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, the next generation high-speed data technology capable of delivering rates up to 2.4 Mbps. Five operators in Asia, North and Latin Americas have already deployed it commercially and four more, including Verizon and KDDI, will launch by the end of the year. In South Korea, SK Telecom announced its latest 1xEV-DO service: real-time video conferencing, while KTF offers streaming video on demand, including TV broadcasting, music videos, sport clips and customized content."

Posted to the site on 16th July 2003