Qualcomm has committed to developing an Ultra Mobile Broadband product line last week at CTIA Wireless 2007. UMB, formerly called EV-DO Revision C, is Qualcomm’s prefered path to “4G”. The UMB standard is expected to be finalized within the first half of this year.
Qualcomm also unveiled its first EV-DO Revision B chipset, a next-generation data-only handset modem that combines three Revision A channels into one 5 MHz broadband pipe.
But UMB is a disruptive technology, says Telephony Magazine, the first interruption in an unbroken chain that has kept CDMA operators on an upgrade path since the late ’90s.
UMB is part of the 4G evolution path laid out by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, which Qualcomm is largely responsible for founding.
UMB will use Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), similar to the air-interface standard used by fixed and mobile WiMAX rather than Code Division Multiple Access, Qualcomm’s patented modulation standard, used in both cellular’s 1.25MHz-wide EV-DO channels and 5 Mhz-wide channels used by the world-wide 3G UMTS standard (adopted by AT&T) and incorporating the HSDPA data standard).
According to Telephony Magazine, the Mobile Data Modem 8900, and a cell site silicon, the Cell Site Modem 8900, will support average downstream rates of 9.3 MB/s. Rev. B takes multiple 1.25 MHz channels into one super channel. The new chipset, the MSM 7850, is backwards compatible with all of CDMA 1X technologies and is scheduled to begin sampling this year.
But Qualcomm Chief Operating Officer Sanjay Jha says carriers probably won’t deploy it like CDMA 1X and EV-DO because it requires a fork-lift upgrade, new wide swathes of spectrum, and new handsets. The 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) is expected to be the 4G path for most GSM vendors.
CDMA carriers like Sprint and Verizon Wireless have questioned the need for Rev. B beyond niche markets. Mobile WiMAX chips from Qualcomm may also be forthcoming, though Qualcomm’s support of WiMAX is less than lackluster, says Telephony.
Evolution-Data Optimized (EVDO), is a wireless radio broadband data standard adopted by many CDMA mobile phone service providers in United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, Russia, Brazil, and Australia. It is standardized by 3GPP2, as part of the CDMA2000 family of standards.
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