The death of CDMA technology to be declared soon

The death of CDMA technology to be declared soon

VietNamNet Bridge – In its heyday, Vietnam had four telecom operators using CDMA. However, the technology has no room in the Vietnamese market, and its death is expected to be declared soon.

While CDMA has been praised by experts that it is more powerful by far than GSM technology, it has an unhappy ending on the Vietnamese market. Three out of the four telecom operators that developed CDMA technology, including VNPT, Hanoi Telecom and EVN Telecom have “given up the games.” Meanwhile, the only one left, SPT, is considering using another technology.

Hai Duong Telecom belonging to the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group VNPT was the pioneer in the CDMA technology based market, when it began providing services based on the technology in 2000. The network was the “gift” of the South Korean LG Group.

However, when other mobile networks came out, a lot of customers shifted to use the services of the new networks and left the CDMA network, for some reasons. Customers could not choose terminal devices because they need specific devices. Besides, they had much to complain about the low quality of service, because the network was on the same waveband of 450 MHz with EVN Telecom. Finally, Hai Duong Telecom had to stop the operation of the first CDMA network in Vietnam in mid 2007.

NanPhone, the CDMA based inner network which as implemented in Nghe An province, hit the market four years later. However, its existence could not last for a long time, and it shut down in November 2008. This was the gift of Chinese ZTE group.

The third inner network of VNPT, DaPhone in Da Nang City in the central region made debut on the same year with NanPhone, which was also a gift of a Chinese group – Huawei. However, the network also stopped its operation on April 1, 2008.

Exactly one year after beginning providing mobile services, HT Mobile announced the shutting down of CDMA network. A manager of Hanoi Telecom said that just after a short time of launching HT Mobile, bad news rushed down, which forced many big device manufacturers in the world, including Ericsson, to decide to give up CDMA.

The difficulties in choosing terminal devices and the fall into disgrace of the CDMA technology in the world then put HT Mobile into the “technological accident.”

On December 15, 2008, Hanoi Telecom sent a document to management agencies, informing that it will develop eGSM technology instead of CDMA. 

On April 9, 2009, HT Mobile officially changed look to provide services in Vietnam with GSM technology. Commenting about the move, experts said that Hanoi Telecom and its partners made a “quick reaction” by shutting down CDMA network to ease the damages.

Before HT Mobile joined the mobile network market, analysts once predicted that there would be a war between HT Mobile and S-Fone which used the same technology, had the same waveband, and more importantly, targeted the same clients.

Prior to that, S-Fone once hoped that the existence of Hanoi Telecom would make the “CDMA community” in Vietnam get more powerful with three service providers EVN Telecom, SPT and Hanoi Telecom.

Backed by the powerful parent group – the Electricity of Vietnam, EVN Telecom joined the mobile network market in 2005. However, the telco continuously took loss before it was transferred to Viettel. This also means the declaration of death of the CDMA of EVN Telecom.

In the latest news, SPT is considering declaring the death for CDMA technology of S-Fone network to shift to HSPA (3G) in an effort to rescue the network which is now in big difficulties.

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