Thailand slow to catch on to 3G
In terms of wireless technologies, Thailand is falling behind the bulk of countries with third-generation (3G) cellular networks, including Mongolia.
Kaneungjit Suriyathumrongkul, senior director and country manager of Qualcomm Thailand, said this week that - according to 3Gtoday.com - there were currently 260 commercial operators of 3G networks in 109 countries. The new 3G services are almost all flavours of technologies based on the generic name CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), which is a digital wireless technology that allows multiple users to share radio frequencies at the same time. As of the end of last month, there were more than 404 million CDMA subscribers, including 88.4 million subscribers to the Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) network, 46.9 million using CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and 268.3 million operating CDMA2000 1x. In October 2005, there were only about 240 million 3G subscribers. Kaneungjit said 3G had gained a rapid growth in subscribers in recent years and now accounted for roughly one-fifth of all wireless cellular subscribers. Kaneungjit said the CDMA 2000 1xEV-DO system, which state-owned CAT Telecom is soft-launching upcountry, expanded rapidly worldwide last year. Operators committed to introducing the higher-speed EV-DO REV A version of CDMA networks include KDDI of Japan, Skytel in Mongolia, Telecom New Zealand, LG Telecom of South Korea and Verizon Wireless in the United States. The Nation
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