12/22/1999 Conference Call - Selected Bytes - 3G/CDMA/W-CDMA.
1999 Conference Call 12/22/1999 75 min.
Investor Conference Call Regarding The Sale Of Its Phone Business
Section 3: Question and Answer Session (68 min.)
Graham Tanaka(?) with Tanaka Capital Management.
Timemark: 42:40
GT:: What implications does this agreement have for 3G, and I'm hoping it's really just a beginning in terms of lining up other people internationally on your standard.
IJ:: Well, you have to remember 3G, for almost everybody, we're talking CDMA, so from our point of view, that is our standard. And we're just anxious to see the various modes, particularly the 2 modes, the direct spread and the multi-carrier be done properly. The multi-carrier is basically an evolution of where we are. The 1x is already standardized -- we're making parts, testing the parts. So that's moving ahead very rapidly. The DS has got a little bit further to go, and then still has to go through a significant testing period. We, I think depending on where you're coming from, you may make a choice between one or the other. There'll have to be some comparative testing, some comparative costing. The market will have a little bit of a choice to make those decisions. There's been some claims, ongoing claims -- I noticed a press release recently, stating that the DS was an evolution of GSM. It didn't even mention the word CDMA for some reason -- they must have forgotten to. But, the evolution of GSM, well, it of course can use the GSM networking capabilities but there's also the agreements to go ahead and provide for using the ANSI 41 (? or ETSI?) networking systems. As far as the air interface, it's nothing at all like GSM/TDMA -- it's CDMA. And so, the decisions as to how to move ahead will be made carrier by carrier. I think there's a lot of testing, a lot of economics yet to be done.
I think the fact that we end up now with another very strong player in existing CDMA, going through the evolutionary steps, to 1x multi-carrier, and hopefully on to HDR -- that will give even a stronger basis -- we'll be able to move even more quickly in the world to CDMA. I'm still very hopeful that as operators elsewhere, that are not using CDMA, realize that boy, in 2001 they'd better have a fairly strong data capability, and that that's going to require a new investment and some allocation of spectrum, that in looking at the options that they have for doing so, they recognize that 1x hands down is better than anything else that exists out there. And so we're hoping that perhaps some will begin transitions a little bit earlier. We shall see how that all moves forward. There, obviously, are a number of hindrances -- regulatory, industrial, policy, and otherwise to having that happen. But the economic certainly presses it forward that way.
I think the Japanese manufacturers have not been a major factor in the European market in the past. I think they're all very much focused and hoping to become players in that market, and 3rd generation CDMA will certainly be one way of accomplishing that. And so, again, this strengthens Kyocera and I would expect that they will turn out to be a significant player worldwide in all of these emerging CDMA markets. |
