Mr. Pullin,
You truly are clueless. Engineer spent the last 20 years pioneering wireless technology for a little upstart out on the Sorrento Mesa, while you've been cashing your dividend checks and recounting the glory days of T's backend. And Mr. Su, although having a little fun at his buddy Engineer's expense, is a no-neck Chinaman that happens to own exactly 206 shares (assuming he didn't lose them to margin) of that same impudent little company and lives a few drivers and a five iron from its headquarters. So, why don't you instruct us all in the differences between a TDMA and a CDMA air interface in a mobile wireless system? Are there any differences, for instance, in the spectral efficiency of TDMA vs. CDMA? And what's this soft-handoff vs. hard-handoff thing? What exactly is a rake-reciever anyway?
And last, why does George Gilder say these things about AWE and its technology: If AT&T (T) wireless IPO (Irredemmably Pathetic Offering) succeeds on the scale T is
predicting it will be an even more amazingly Barnumesque feat than Craig McCaw's unloading it on T the first time. Inferior by far even to GSM, the European TDMA standard, T's American TDMA network has no future at all. Literally, incapable of carrying bursty Internet data at any reasonably speed, TDMA will likely never evolve into a 3G standard. Concurrently US TDMA carriers can offer data only on a separate cellular digital packet data (CDPD) network operating at a humble 19.2 Kbps. GSM networks now poking along at only 9.2 Khps for data have a relatively easy and inexpensive upgrade to a "Generation 2.5" system known as GPRS, which will eventually offer data at up to 57.6 Kbps. That's paltry compared to QCOM's G2.5 entry, the CDMA 2000
system offering nearly triples the data rate and unlike GPRS, allowing voice and data to use the same channels.
Far from leeching voice to support data, CDMA2000 actually doubles the voice capacity of existing CDMA networks. T however does not even have GPRS to fall back on since that is a GSM-only upgrade. For robust data, T must wait - possibly forever - for EDGE slated to trail CDMA2000 by at least a year, and featuring a data rate of only 38.4 Kbps, one sixth QCOM's coming HDR system. Worse yet, EDGE is not an extension of American TDMA but a separate network overlay requiring its own dedicated spectrum. Already some 3 times less spectrally efficient than CDMA for voice, the T network is thus about to be impaled on the cruelest dilemma
facing wireless carriers today. Wireless customers increasingly will expect robust data capacity. But at a time
when most wireless networks can sell all the voice minutes they can supply, dedicating channels to data is a painful
and costly exercise. CDMA2000 turns that dilemma into an opportunity as early as the end of this year, offering
data while doubling voice capacity without hogging dedicated spectrum. HDR will require a dedicated channel.
But at 2.4 Mpbs, six times as fast as EDGE, the trade off is easier to justify. If EDGE ever emerges from vapor T's only robust data option will require it to permanently trim voice capacity from an already inefficient system, while PCS and BEL/VOD double voice capacity and add data for one-third the investment. The data dilemma dooms American TDMA networks. The BEL/VOD partnership (inexplicably
renamed Verizon) abruptly thrusts T into a distant second place in wireless market share. T's only remaining
advantages are cash, bulk, and an increasingly compromised brand. In thrall to a bankrupt technology, all three will waste away.
For you Caxton - T is toast. |
