The India CDMA workshop, held here on Thursday, was sponsored by Motorola, Nortel Networks, Lucent Technologies and Qualcomm for discussing the potential of current and future (3G) capabilities of code division multiple access (CDMA) for applications in wireless in local loop (WLL) and mobile environments.

Officials of private Indian telecom companies were highly critical of the technology and said that it had many limitations.

A number of Indian basic service providers like Bharti Telenet use CDMA systems in their network. In fact, Bharti has more than 35,000 lines in Madhya Pradesh that run on CDMA.

Said MTNL general manager (transmission) SP Khullar, "the CDMA system does not even support essential features like fax,thereby rendering it almost useless." He added that the system was sub-standard and did not even meet the basic requirements of hot standby redundancy for call processing. The system was limited due to the use of IS 95 standards and was not of the same quality as wireline, he added.

Sources said the only redeeming features of CDMA technology were its ease of installation and the low fault ratio. In addition, the coverage of a CDMA system is to the tune of 20-25 km, in comparison to technologies like CorDECT which has much smaller coverage area in comparison.

Basic telephone companies are forced to use CDMA due to lack of viable alternatives. CDMA is a digital wireless communications technology that is used in setting up wireless-based communication networks and reduces the dependence on the expensive "wireline" or conventional way of setting up a landline telephone system.

MTNL, which has contracted a 10,000-line Qualcomm CDMA exchange, is now unable to provide full-fledged commercial services, beyondthe 1,000 connections offered a couple of years back.

Sources added that MTNL had made part payment for the equipment and was not able to commission the exchange as the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) had not yet given the mandatory clearance to the Qualcomm system.Qualcomm has licenced the technology to a number of international telecom majors. The company has generated revenue primarily from licence fee and royalties paid by these licencees. In addition, the company also sold subscriber, infrastructure and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) products to wireless communications equipment suppliers and service providers.

Despite the fault, DoT/MTNL have so far not initiated action to encash the bank guarantees of Qualcomm. The company recently sold its infrastructure business to Ericsson.