Hey there..Now we're getting somewhere. My understanding is not the same as yours and that's I suppose why I haven't understood...:o) It's true that I've spent A LOT of time trying to understand these things but am obviously no match for the real experts ie Clark, Walt Houston and of course Greg P. FWIW here's what I think I know now:
For our purposes as wireless investors, now that Ericson and QCOM have agreed that 3G CDMA will support both ANSI-41 and GSM-MAP, it really doesn't matter much what goes on "beneath" the air interface. What we're concerned primarily with is what technologies are better suited to live at the edges of the network. I've never heard any debate about the relative merits of the GSM-MAP or ANSI-41 underlying networks so I have assumed, perhaps incorrectly I don't know, that there's no there there and that being "end to end" is not an issue, at least for Q.
UTRA is based on CDMA technology. It is what more specifically W-CDMA (I think) which is not Qualcomm 3G CDMA (cdma2000) BUT Qualcomm will receive royalties and license fees from implementation of the technology and perhaps even sell ASICs and handsets into the ETSI UTMS (GSM?) community
Whether or not WCDMA is QCOM CDMA was decided IMO by the settlement and the apparent royalty rates. While it's true that WCDMA is/was not CDMA2000, the important core spread spectrum techniques were/ are essentially all QCOM, or as Maurice says, CDMA2000 with bells and whistles attached. I keep saying is/was and were/are because we really don't know what the final specifications are going to be. It's my impression that the Ericsson/QCOM collaboration is going to be quite broad because after all, are they really competitors now that Q is out of infrastructure and there is a 3G agreement? Wouldn't they be ideal 3G wCDMA/2000 partners? So perhaps the 2 standards will end up being less distinct after all, and either way, as Gregg is constantly reminding us, QCOM IPR and know-how is at the epicenter of both proposals.
GSM, WITHOUT a CDMA air interface, obviously still has legs. Incumbency is a VERY BIG deal. Who knows whether these high data rates are really necessary? As ATT is demonstrating, nobody is throwing out TDMA and installing CDMA on top of it, yet. Perhaps a day will come when Sprint's cost/min places ATT or Omnipoint at such a disadvantage that they'll have to fold but I'm certainly not holding my breath on that one. Thing is though, there must be some pretty powerful reasons why QCOM CDMA has been chosen to sit at the center of most 3G proposals, Don't forget that phase 1 CDMA2000 is supposed to double capacity while providing data up to 144kps.Can this be said of GPRS and EDGE?
Unless I've competely misunderstood, always a possibility, if CDMA becomes the DOMINANT air interface, then It WILL dominate, which is why I put so much energy into trying to understand this arcane 3G air interface debate. Does it really matter how they count those WCDMA subs?
Hope this makes some sense...
Best,
Dave |
