Many carriers have been working on successful W-CDMA voice-call demonstrations. Meanwhile, an industry debate has continued raging over Bluetooth's market viability. Surprisingly, Qualcomm just cut through the mire of both of these issues by completing the world's first Bluetooth-to-W-CDMA (UMTS) voice calls.

The W-CDMA voice calls were made under laboratory conditions using commercially available Bluetooth headsets. These headsets interfaced with Qualcomm's MSM6200 Mobile Station Modem (MSM) chip on a Subscriber Unit Reference Development System (SURF) platform. Voice calls were both originated from and terminated at the Bluetooth headset. Bluetooth-to-GSM voice calls were also demonstrated.

The company's single-chip MSM6200 multimode W-CDMA/GSM/GPRS baseband processor is the first commercially available device that offers integrated Bluetooth technology and other Launchpad applications. The full MSM6200 solution, including the radioOne ZIF RF technology, is available.