Affordable mobile supports both GSM and CDMA

The state agency is expected to introduce the phone this quarter, CAT senior executive vice president Tanwadee Wongterarit said yesterday. The price will be about Bt3,500.

She said the devices would be supplied by major Chinese handset-maker ZTE.

The phones are aimed at existing GSM cellular subscribers who want to enjoy the low air-time rates of CAT's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) service and have more than one choice of network.

The phone has two SIM-card slots, one for the GSM system and one for CDMA. The screen will show the network signals of both, so users can switch to the network with the better signal when making a call.

There are more than 40 million GSM cellular subscribers in Thailand, of which over 20 million are with Advanced Info Service, some 13 million subscribe to Total Access Communication and about 8 million are with True Move.

Both CAT and Hutchison-CAT provide a service on the same CDMA 2000 1-x cellular system on their separate networks. CDMA technology boasts high-speed data-transmission capacity.

Hutchison-CAT's network covers 25 provinces, while that of CAT covers the remainder of the country. They have already roamed the two networks together, to enable customers to make calls nationwide.

Hutchison-CAT has about 700,000 subscribers, while CAT only test-launched its cellular service a few months ago.

Usanee Mongkolporn

 The Nation