3/29/99 Wireless Week snapshot of US TDMA/CDMA scene:
wirelessweek.com
SBC and Ameritech
SBC and Ameritech expect a June FCC ruling on their proposed $62 billion merger. Though the deal is driven by wireline activities, with 9.36 million cellular and PCS subscribers, the combined company would have the industry's largest customer base. The companies agreed to divest overlapping cellular properties, which are in Chicago, St. Louis and central Illinois. Press reports have Ameritech shopping its properties privately, with a $2.5 billion price tag. Ameritech's CDMA networks also cover Detroit, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio. (Continuing its shopping spree, in January SBC agreed to buy Philadelphia-based Comcast Cellular Communications Inc., including 12 PCS licenses Comcast hasn't built out.)
Unlike the pure CDMA GTE-Bell Atlantic deal, this merger combines TDMA and global system for mobile communications companies. TDMA proponent SBC operates CDMA systems in South Korea and has purchased GSM-based Pacific Telesis Group. "SBC doesn't think digital standards themselves are important. It's footprint; it's scale and scope," Roe said. "3G will marry all these regions together."
Many analysts more or less concur. TDMA and CDMA are splitting the North American market, and neither has a technology advantage, said Kerr, who predicts in five years that CDMA will have a 48 percent market share and TDMA 44 percent.
"They're all going to be delivering pretty much the same thing over the next year or so," said Jane Zweig, senior vice president at Herschel Shosteck Associates Ltd. "The advantage of technology is minimal and decreasing."
"Winners and losers will be determined by the ability to roll out differentiated services and value-added feature sets," Kerr said, with the ultimate goal being sharing minutes and revenue in landline and wireless, local and long-distance.
"Competition will always follow your technology," Lefar said. "How effectively you communicate the benefits of that technology is what really creates sustainable differentiation> |
