CDMA Enhanced By New OTA Spec

By Joseph Palenchar On Feb 12 2001 - 8:00am

BEDMINSTER, N.J. -Verizon Wireless and Openwave Systems of Redwood City, Calif., ascribed multiple subscriber benefits to jointly developed over-the-air (OTA) provisioning software, which expands the capabilities of the CDMA standard's OTA spec.

Verizon launched enhanced OTA services in all of its digital 800MHz and 1.9GHz markets, and it has teamed with OpenWave to propose the solution to the CDMA Development Group as a CDMA industry standard.

Microbrowser-equipped phones must be used to take advantage of the new capabilities.

Previously, CDMA carriers could upload a phone's mobile telephone number to a phone upon activation, simplifying the selling process for retailers.

The new OTA capabilities include the ability to reprogram a phone's area code and to upload changes to the phone's list of preferred roaming carriers. The latter capability ensures that a carrier's digital features follow the subscriber into a roaming network, and it will ensure consumers are able to take advantage of low roaming rates that their home carrier has negotiated, Verizon said.

In the future, the software will make it possible for carriers to remotely update a phone's software, as well as let subscribers use their handsets to change the information services they want pushed to their phone and use their phones to change their menu of pull services.