Opportunity For United States To Take Leadership Position

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COSTA MESA, Calif., Sept. 29, 1998 -- The CDMA Development Group (CDG) today announced that a letter was submitted last week to 21 key United States Government officials, stressing the importance of harmonization for third generation mobile technologies (3G). The letter details the benefits of harmonizing the two leading third generation proposals, Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) and CDMA2000, also known as Wideband cdmaOne*, explaining that the global telecommunications industry is at a critical juncture, providing the United States with the ideal opportunity to assume a leadership position on the issue. The letter was signed by Members of the CDG Executive Board, including AirTouch Communications, ALLTEL Communications, Ameritech Cellular, BC TEL Mobility, Bell Atlantic Mobile, Bell Mobility, GTE Wireless, LG Telecom, and Sprint PCS.

"The letter explains how the presence of multiple second generation technologies was a key driver of growth and competition in the U.S. wireless market, and the significant differences between CDMA, GSM and TDMA still provide an important basis for competitive differentiation. In contrast, W-CDMA and CDMA2000 are nearly identical and will provide little or no basis for competitive differentiation," said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG.

"The CDG has always advocated open markets and the use of multiple technologies where there is a benefit to this approach. Our position throughout the 3G debate remains that similar standards proposals should be harmonized when the differences between these proposals are so insignificant that the consumer cannot tell the difference and may actually be disadvantaged by higher costs and lack of interoperability. Therefore, supporters of proposals that are clearly different from W-CDMA and CDMA2000, such as those based on TDMA technology, should continue their standardization efforts and should not be expected to converge with CDMA-based proposals. This approach is the very essence of the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) ITU 2000 effort, and also something that the global telecommunications industry is expecting."

LaForge continued, "In addition, we are encouraged that the North American GSM Alliance and the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium (UWCC) recently indicated their support for the principle of convergence. Historically, the two groups have been opposed to convergence, and we only hope this shift is not too little, too late. We assume that their decision to work together on 3G matters also indicates their support for the ITU’s Family of Systems concept which incorporates both ANSI-41 and GSM MAP in 3G solutions. The GSM Alliance has opposed this concept in the past. We look forward to the UWCC and GSM Alliance actively contributing to the definition of an open interface between ANSI-41 and GSM MAP to enable global roaming to the IMT-2000 subscriber."