A recent equity research report on wireless technologies from Morgan Stanley has placed placed CDMA2000 in the leading position for delivering 3G services. Research conducted for this report was based on real-world operator experiences in Asia, the only region to have commercially available, co-existing 2.5G and 3G technologies including GPRS, W-CDMA, CDMA2000 1X and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO.
"Morgan Stanley's extensive research concluded that CDMA2000 operators are ahead of their counterparts in offering commercial 3G services," said Luiz Carvalho, managing director of wireless for Morgan Stanley. "The contributing factors to the success of CDMA2000 are the ease of migration, low capex requirements, backward compatibility allowing seamless roaming between 2G and 3G networks and lower handset pricing."
According to the report, key benefits of CDMA2000 compared with other 3G technologies include the fact that, according to Morgan Stanley, CDMA2000 requires lower capex for data network upgrades. In Japan, KDDI will invest less than 25% of the capital to migrate to CDMA2000 1xEV-DO than NTT DoCoMo will spend on building their W-CDMA network. Similarly, in the United States, Sprint PCS will spend US$8 per POP to implement CDMA2000 1xEV-DV while other operators will have to invest three times that amount to upgrade to W-CDMA.
A significant finding of the survey was that 3G services deliver higher revenues for operators. KT Freetel announced that color screen CDMA2000 1X users generate 380% more data ARPU and 54% higher total revenue than their 2G subscribers. SK Telecom also recently reported that higher ARPU from 3G Internet and data services contributed to a 39% increase in revenue and 42% increase in net profits for the first half of 2002.
"Morgan Stanley's independent analysis of 3G technologies underscores that CDMA2000 is clearly leading in the delivery of 3G," said Perry LaForge, executive director, CDG. "The higher revenues, lower investment and ease of migration that CDMA2000 technologies offer make a compelling business case for operators to migrate to 3G. CDMA2000 will continue to build on this momentum in the coming months with additional commercial deployments, new devices and high-margin applications becoming available."'"
Posted to the site on 6th August 2002
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/7318.php