Via Telecom, a subsidiary of Taiwanese chipset and
microprocessor vendor Via Technologies, has been granted a licence
by Qualcomm to manufacture and sell cdmaOne and CDMA2000 1X ASICs
(application-specific integrated circuits) to telecommunication
equipment makers.
The agreement resolves a long-standing issue related an
announcement last year that Via would acquire LSI Logic's CDMA
chip design centre in San Diego.
At the time the acquisition plan was announced, the question of
whether or not LSI Logic's CDMA licences would be transferred to
Via was unresolved. That matter has now been settled and the
acquisition has been completed.
Under the terms of the licensing agreement, Via will pay
royalties to Qualcomm.
At the time the acquisition was announced, LSI Logic offered two
baseband processors for CDMA handsets: the SignalSphere CBP 3.0,
which is compatible with CDMAOne, PCS (Personal Communication
Services) and AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service) networks and
supports a data transfer rate of up to 64K bits per second (bps),
and the SignalSphere CBP 4.0, which was designed for more advanced
cellular services and is compatible with CDMA2000, PCS and AMPS
networks. The CBP 4.0 supports data transfer rates up to
153.6Kbps.
Sumner Lemon writes for IDG News Service