EV-DO was designed as an evolution of the CDMA2000 (IS-2000) standard that would support high data rates and could be deployed alongside a wireless carrier's voice services. An EV-DO channel has a bandwidth of 1.25 MHz, the same bandwidth size that IS-95A (IS-95) and IS-2000 (1xRTT) use.The channel structure, on the other hand, is very different. Additionally, the back-end network is entirely packet-based, and thus is not constrained by the restrictions typically present on a circuit switched network.

The EV-DO feature of CDMA2000 networks provides access to mobile devices with forward link air interface speeds of up to 2.4 Mbit/s with Rev. 0 and up to 3.1 Mbit/s with Rev. A. The reverse link rate for Rev. 0 can operate up to 153 kbit/s, while Rev. A can operate at up to 1.8 Mbit/s. It was designed to be operated end-to-end as an IP based network, and so it can support any application which can operate on such a network and bit rate constraints.

T-U500 CDMA 1X EV-DO RevA wireless data card supports laptops and other equipments with USB interfaces. T-U500 supports data, voice and SMS functions.