The CDMA Development Group has announced that there are now more than 100 Million CDMA subscribers in India. Now India has become only the second country in the world to have more than 100 million CDMA-based (code division multiple access) mobile phone sbscribers after the US, which has 157 million CDMA users, according to an industry body. While India overtook China to become the second-largest CDMA market, the country’s leading service provider Reliance Communications (RCOM) has become the second-largest CDMA service provider behind the USA’s Verizon Wireless, the CDMA Development Group (CDG) said here on Thursday. Tata Teleservices is ranked fourth in the list of top global players, behind China Telecom.It took CDMA, which competes with the GSM (global system of mobile communication) platform globally, six-and-a-half years to reach the 100 million mark in India after being introduced in December 2002. GSM is much more popular, accounting for 80% of the global market, according to its promoter GSM Association. While there are 475 million CDMA users in the world, GSM standard is being used by over three billion people. In India, the GSM user base is close to 300 million.
CDG executive director Perry LaForge attributed the rapid growth of CDMA users in India to a wide selection of affordable devices and technologies offering CDMA voice and data services in urban and rural areas. “CDMA allows a rich telecom experience, especially on the data side, and we are confident that experience will only get better, especially as 3G arrives and we are able to unleash the full potential of applications and services,” Tata Tele MD Anil Sardana said.
In March 2009, both RCOM and Tata Teleservices launched high-speed mobile broadband services. “As we look to the next 100 million subscribers, CDMA mobile broadband is already satisfying the demand for affordable high-speed wireless data services while CDG initiatives will further increase the selection of CDMA voice and data devices,” Mr LaForge said.
Qualcomm, the makers of the CDMA standard, will bring the benefits of advanced CDMA technologies to India, its senior vice-president (India and South Asia) Kanwalinder Singh said.