AT&T races against investment deadline to bring 3G to life: AT&T Wireless is finally buying UMTS gear to build out a W-CDMA network, the third-generation step up from GSM. If they don't have six cities running with 384 Kbps by Dec. 31, 2004, they have to return over $6 billion to NTT DoCoMo. Early cities for testing should be Seattle and San Francisco.
Confusingly, even though it's called W-CDMA, it's not directly connected to second-generation CDMA service offered by U.S. carriers. Those carriers, like Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless, step up to 1xRTT, 1xEvDO, 1xEV-DV, and eventually 3x flavors that expand on CDMA. Somewhere in here, Qualcomm owns quite a few patents.