The CDMA Development Group (CDG), holding its annual 3G World Congress in Hong Kong this week, announced that the standard for CDMA2000 EV-DO Revision B is on schedule to be published in the first quarter of 2006.

Rev. B is a further enhancement to the CDMA2000 standard that provides lower latency to better support applications such as Voice over IP, while increasing throughput up to 73.5 Megabits per second in the forward link and 27 Mbps in the reverse link by dynamically allocating multiple RF carriers across wider frequency blocks. Those rates could be realized across 20 Mhz of spectrum, while single 1.25 Mhz carrier and an aggregated 5 Mhz carrier in the forward link will deliver peak rates of up to 4.9 Mbps and 14.7 Mbps, respectively

Motorola earlier this week announced its implementation of EV-DO Rev. A, which allows peak data rates of 3.1 Mbps on the forward link and 1.8 Mbps on the reverse link, and lower system latencies to support delay-sensitive applications. Network operators will start to move to Rev. A early next year, the CDG said.

While Rev. A will be able support multimedia services, including voice, data and broadcast over all-IP networks, Rev. B (also known as DO Multicarrier) will allow operators to quickly transition to enhanced next-generation interactive services using existing frequency bands and/or new spectrum allocations – without any service interruption to their customers. That transisition is likely to happen broadly around 2008.