New lease on life: 3GPP2 publishes CDMA2000 1X Advanced spec
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Aug 18th 2009 9:21AM
posted Aug 18th 2009 9:21AM
All the next-gen focus seems to be on HSPA+, WiMAX, and LTE these days, but make no mistake, CDMA's alive and well -- and even for the world's present-day CDMA carriers planning to migrate to LTE, legacy cells will be critical assets for years (if not decades) to come. To that end, the CDMA Development Group has announced that the 3GPP2 has published official specifications for CDMA2000 1X Advanced, which bundles a whole bunch of tweaks and enhancements geared toward significantly increasing voice capacity on 1X airwaves (up to four times current capacity, theoretically). This'll give LTE carriers a technology path that should easily carry CDMA through the end of its life without oversaturation, and as an added bonus, it frees up space for more EV-DO spectrum.Perhaps more interestingly, the CDG is talking up simultaneous 1X Voice and EV-DO data -- SVDO -- which should finally close a big gap that EV-DO suffers against its UMTS / HSPA counterparts and deliver on a promise originally intended to be delivered by Qualcomm's EV-DV tech back in the day. 1X Advanced upgrades are expected to be available to carriers in the second half of 2010, and SVDO is anticipated to hit around the same time.
[Via Phone Scoop]
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!! Finally simultaneous voice/data. If Sprint jumps on this, I'm NEVER switching! Although, I've always wondered why is it so hard to do in the first place? Can someone clear this up for me - Couldn't devices now just be built with one 1x/voice radio, and 1 separate EVDO radio? I guess battery drain would be the biggest issue but the EVDO radio could remain dormant until needed... Either way, I'm excited.
They published a spec, yes, but will there be hardware that fast?
Of course Sprint is jumping on this, it's a CDMA thing. This is great news, but LTE/WiMax was going to solve this anyway. I guess I'll have to wait for someone who has more knowledge in this matter.
They need a touch more security in terms of cloning.
GSM is a pain in the ass to clone. (Try to get your Ki on a newer AT&T SIM. It'll lock out after ~64000 attempts and render the SIM useless.)
CDMA... hell, I've managed to clone one of my HTCs at one point so I could use it on draconian-Verizon's prepaid network because they block smartphones. It's just one ESN change away...
CDMA needs to figure out better methods than A-KEY or CAVE to secure themselves against cloning.
first we had EDGE Evolution (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution Evolution) and now we have SVDO (Simultaneous 1X Voice and Data Only). lol. How is it still data only if it is also simultaneous?
(oh, and "EV-DO data"? Evolution Data Only data? lol)
...yes, its 4:44am PDT and i'm bored...