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Technology Stocks : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company
QCOM 155.82-1.3%Jan 23 3:59 PM EST
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To: JMD who wrote (635)8/6/1999 5:04:00 PM
From: kech  Read Replies (1) of 13582
 
Surfer Mike - I can't help to comment that McCaw had a lot of reasons to go with TDMA. It was reaching capacity shortages in LA, Chicago, and NY. TDMA was the only digital available. McCaw had one card up his sleave - he wanted to pursue a national footprint in cellular. Something that in retrospect has been truly visionary. Both ATT and Sprint PCS benefit enormously from this. To lock up this advantage he had to go with the digital technology that was available at the time. If he had waited, and didn't have the aspirations and commitment to develop the national footprint, would ATT really have paid so much for McCaw? I think not. I also think though, that it was the right thing to do for the other cellular providers to wait for CDMA. So the battle became first to market vs. better technology. The struggle continues to this day. But it wasn't a mistake for McCaw to take the side it took. I would argue this at the time and even in retrospect it hasn't been a mistake. In addition, CDMA was painfully late in becoming commercially deployed. TDMA had free reign for a long time. Granted, there were some problems with early TDMA too but for a long time they could advertise as THE "digital" provider. Nice for the marketing guys.
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