Telecom NZ to shut CDMA roaming and EVDO services

New Zealand’s incumbent carrier, Telecom, has announced that it will cease operation of two of its CDMA services in the final quarter of this year. The WorldMode Roaming service will shut down on October 28th while the 3G EVDO data service will be switched off on November 30th. The firm will close down its CDMA voice network altogether in mid-2012.

Over the past year Telecom has been migrating mobile data customers onto its XT WCDMA network, which was launched commercially on May 29th 2009.

“The XT Network offers our customers a considerably better experience while both roaming overseas and using mobile broadband here in New Zealand,” said Gemma Roper, head of network operations for Telecom. “This has resulted in many customers of [WorldMode and EVDO] moving over to XT already.”

WorldMode had attracted only a relatively small number of customers in any case, Roper said, while WCDMA roaming is available in 70 more destinations than the CDMA-based service. While CDMA handsets will continue to offer voice and data services until the entire network is powered down in 2012, they will not be able to roam overseas in the majority of destinations with the service and data speeds will be limited to 2G performance.