The New Divide In Wireless: CDMA vs OFDM
The Wireless Watch folks are taking a look at some of the recent developments in the broadband wireless world and are suggesting that it’s pretty much dividing into two camps: CDMA-based technologies, such as those found in today’s 3G offerings and OFDM-based technologies found in other wireless broadband solutions, including mobile WiMax (eventually). If you look at it that way, it certainly does make some of the recent moves make a bit more sense. The launch of the “Super 3G” effort becomes the CDMA camp showing that they plan to come up with an alternative to a 4G solution that’s related to WiMax. The real story is a bit more complex than what’s described here, but this certainly is one way the battle lines may be drawn. Of course, in some sense, it’s tough to get too worked up about competing vaporware offerings just yet. A lot of things can happen between now and any time that these products see the light of day.
