As technology grows, old ones become obsolete and new ones are welcomed. Same is happening with CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). The death of CDMA was filed a long ago in 2008 when Qualcomm, the company behind CDMA stopped R&D on UMB - the next of CDMA family favoring LTE as future.
As technology grows, old ones become obsolete and new ones are welcomed. Same is happening with CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). The death of CDMA was filed a long ago in 2008 when Qualcomm, the company behind CDMA stopped R&D on UMB - the next of CDMA family favoring LTE as future.
Worldwide CDMA is not well accepted, though everyone knows about its advantages as a data platform. CDMA is well received and commercially popular in few countries like United States, Canada, South Korea, Russia, India, Australia, China, Indonesia, Nigeria and others. In most contries CDMA is deployed (on 800 or 450 Mhz band) for other uses like emergency services, military communications, M2M services.
CANADA
In Canada there were several CDMA players - top 4 has already made plans to wind up CDMA. Here operators want to free up CDMA spectrum for deploying LTE. First they cut EVDO - so that data users move to LTE, and then CDMA 1x will be phased out in time so that voice customers get time to migrate.
| Operator Name | Started by | Shut down process | Notes |
| MTS Canada | 2002 | CDMA shut down process started in March, 2014. EVDO shut down in July 2015. Complete shut down by end of 2016. |
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| Bell Mobility | 2002 | EVDO shut down in July 2015. Complete CDMA shut down by early 2017. |
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| SaskTel | 2003 | EVDO shut down in September 2014. Complete CDMA shut down by 2015-16 |
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| Telus | 2002 | CDMA shut down process started in May 2014. Complete shutdown planned by end of 2015. |
INDONESIA
In Indonesia the whole thing happened because govt. wants to free up 850 MHz band for 4G/LTE deployment.
| Operator Name | Started by | Shut down process | Notes |
| Telkom (Flexi) | 2002 | Complete shut down by end of 2015. | Users asked to migrate to Telkomsel (GSM arm of parent company) |
| Sampoerna Telecom | Probabaly in 2010-11. | ||
| SmartFren | 2003 | CDMA 1900 in Dec '16 |
Smart Telecom (Smart) and Mobile8 (Fren) was merged to form SmartFren – the only surviving CDMA player. Smartfren has its own CDMA handset initiative, 'AndroMax'. Smartfren is now pure LTE operator in Indonesia. |
| Bakrie (esia) [MVNO on Smartofren] | Status – unknown. It has stopped in sale selling devices. |
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| Indostat (StarOne) | 2004 | FWP was stopped in June 2015. | opted E-GSM |
USA
MetroPCS, Rock Wireless, Leap Wireless (Cricket) - shut down
Verizon is all set to shut down CDMA by end of 2019. From the middle of 2018 Verizon will not activate any device without LTE.
Sprint is yet to declare any deadline, but committed to provide CDMA 2G/3G services (1X and EvDo) til 2021.
RUSSIA
Russia had some issues with CDMA since the begining (1998) as CDMA is copyrighted by American company Qualcomm and CDMA IS-95 systems connects to American Global Positioning Systems (GPS).
However a few handful of companies entered CDMA business:
- SOTEL from Sotovaja Svjaz Bashkortostan, owned by Rostelecom and later migrated to Skylink by merging with Tele2 Russia.
- RTK merged with FORA Communications and later Tele2 bought it. Tele2 was operating CDMA business under SkyLink brand. They shut down CDMA in October 2016 and migrated customers to LTE network. Allo Incognito was offering CDMA MVNO over SkyLink, and shut down CDMA operations at the same time.
INDIA
| Network Status | ||
| Reliance Mobile CDMA | Voice and data 1x, RevA, RevB |
Shut down started from June 2016. Users are being migrated to Reliance GSM and eventually these users will get access to Reliance 4G/Jio 4G as both companies to share spectrums. Eventually RCom stopped operations in December 2017. |
| Tata Docomo CDMA
Photon (CDMA Rev A Dongle) Photon Max (CDMA Rev B Dongle) |
Operational
1x, RevA, RevB |
Tata Tele is all set to merge with Airtel in future, and as the merger happens in time airtel will judiciously stop Tata Docomo CDMA and refarm the precious 800MHz spectrum for LTE deployment. As of August 2018, TD CDMA voice services don't accept new customers. However Photon services are running, hence we can presume that existing CDMA voice customers (if any left) are also continuing their services. |
| BSNL CDMA | Operational in selected circles
Voice and data 1x, RevA |
BSNL has returned CDMA spectrum and shut down services in majority of circles. For eg. Kolkata lost BSNL CDMA services by March 2016. |
| Ping Mobile | Status unknown
Voice 1x |
Ping Mobile is now engulfed by Videocon Mobile (GSM). The website went down. Most users might be shifted to Videocon GSM. We can guess that only FWP may be live. However as Videocon Mobile was shut down by selling their assets including spectrum, it's obvious that Ping Mobile is shut down completely. |
| MTNL CDMA | Voice and data - 1x only |
Shut down |
| Virgin Mobile CDMA | Voice and data 1x, RevA |
Virgin CDMA was launched as a pseudo MVNO on Tata Docomo/Tata Indicom in March 2008. Virgin Mobile was reselling Tata's services under different name with some different benefits. Brand has been stopped earlier in March 2015, and services are shifted to Tata Docomo platform. |
| MTS India | Voice and data 1x, RevA,RevB |
MTS India the brand of SSTL was acquired by RCOM and it is final to shut down CDMA services of MTS by December 31, 2017 |
| Vodafone Netcruise | MTS RevA rebranded data cards | Stopped |
** The blue contents were updated after December 2017.
A more detailed list of CDMA networks - live and defunc is avaialble on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CDMA2000_networks
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