450MHz mobile market set to explode

ONE OF THE original analogue mobile phone networks - NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephone) - is effectively dead. So there's a giant scramble to re-use the 450 MHz frequencies for mobile broadband.

And guess who's dead keen to see 450 MHz utilised for CDMA networks? Qualcomm, of course.

The first big battleground for 450 turns out to be in Germany. The German regulator, RegTP, announced the assignment of frequencies for wideband PAMR (Public Access Mobile Radio) in the frequency bands 451.00 - 455.74 MHz and 461.00 - 465.74 MHz just before Xmas.

Since there were only two applications (and three possible licenses), Inquam Deutschland and T-Mobile were the winners.

Although there's been no official announcement, since Qualcomm has a serious interest in Inquam, it's bound to use CDMA450. What will T-Mobile do? Well, since T-Mobile has been experimenting with Flash OFDM from Flarion in The Netherlands, it's got more than a fair chance of supplying the technology.

The INQ reckons that the Inquam network counts as the first true CDMA network in Western Europe. There's another one operated by Inquam in Portugal but it's being deployed as fixed line replacement not a cellular style public network per se.

It doesn't end there. Sweden should be making an announcement about 450 on February 17th and Finland should follow suit closely afterwards.

Flarion's EMEA marketing director, Joe Barrett, reckons his company is in with a fighting chance especially since its gear will be distributed by Siemens. Plus Flash OFDM is designed for IP from the ground up whereas CDMA450 is a modified voice network.

The best bit is that Flarion's offering provides DSL-alike throughput speeds so you can have a superfast Internet connexion on your laptop or via a desktop modem.

Incidentally, The INQ hadn't spotted that Inquam's attempt to buy into Britain - via Dolphin Telecom - had quietly disappeared last July [2004]. Inquam wanted to use CDMA but was told it must stick to TETRA. µ