NEW ORLEANS -- The CDMA Development Group (CDG) today announced the creation of a new international working group within the organization to address CDMA development issues in countries outside the United States.

Through this new working group, manufacturers, carriers and government entities involved in the implementation of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) worldwide can participate in the CDG efforts. By leveraging CDG activities in the United States, other countries will be able to accelerate time-to-market and open up opportunities to export CDMA-based wireless communications products to the U.S.

"The creation of the international CDG group will help facilitate commonality among CDMA systems worldwide," said Allen Salmasi, president, Wireless Telecommunications Division, QUALCOMM Incorporated. "This will allow everyone to benefit from economies of scale and help ensure that feature-rich services are available domestically and internationally using the CDMA standard."

As a part of the new international group, the CDG has already formed a Korean working group and is currently discussing membership with carriers and manufacturers in other areas, including countries in Southeast Asia, South America, the Middle East, North America and Europe.

"Through the CDG, other countries will be able to participate in the detailed interoperability and feature testing that we are conducting here in the U.S., " noted Craig Farrill, vice president of Technology, Planning and Development, AirTouch Communications. "This information sharing will help reduce the time required to bring new CDMA services on-line in these countries."

The CDMA Development Group also announced that it will begin publishing CDG specifications, requirements documents and test plans that the group has developed over the last year. This documentation, which the CDG calls "Reference Documents," will allow carriers and manufacturers to refer to CDG documentation when, for instance, ordering equipment.

For example, the CDG recently completed a specification for higher data rate, 13 KBPS voice coding. The CDG will make this specification (Reference Document) available to any and all interested parties, which will allow manufacturers to immediately begin developing products based on the CDG specification.

"The Reference Document approach is similar to the tack we took for CDPD," states Evan Richards, vice president of technology at Ameritech. "We first create the specification, conduct tests and then make the documents available to the rest of the industry. This open process dramatically improves our time-to-market and allows a number of manufacturers to begin building product now."

To date, the CDG has created Reference Documents in the following areas:

Interoperability Test Plans
Short Message Services (e.g., Paging, Voice Mail Alert, Short Messages)
Asynchronous Data
Packet Data
Over-the-Air Activation
Caller ID
Class Services
Subscriber Access Control
Higher Data Rate Voice (Physical Layer and Codec)
Cellular Sleep Mode

The CDG plans to make other Reference Documents available in the near future. Current plans call for the CDG to address techniques for simplified nationwide roaming, enhanced intersystem operation between cellular and PCS systems and smart card interfaces, among other items.

Reference Document order forms can be obtained from the CDG by contacting Cristy Seyler at Pittiglio Rabin Todd and McGrath, phone (714) 545-9400 and fax (714) 545-8600.

The CDMA Development Group was formed to foster the development of open standards that will spur the market introduction of CDMA voice and data services. Currently over 30 companies, a dozen technical teams and more than 400 individuals are working to define technical specifications for CDMA features and services. CDMA is an all-digital technology designed to provide improved call quality, enhanced privacy and a rich set of new wireless features.