SurferM, I had a good read of that Vodafone announcement of Ericy as their 3G British supplier. Did you notice they said that Ericy was required to work with other suppliers?
Here it is: Message 13717056
<...Peter Bamford, Chief Executive of Vodafone UK Limited, said: "Ericsson has been a strategic partner of Vodafone for many years and we are delighted to further strengthen this relationship by working together on the speedy rollout of our UK 3G network."
Both Ericsson and Vodafone are very active within the international committees working on common standards for 3G technology. In support of its commitment to open standards, Ericsson has agreed to work with Vodafone to enable the
introduction of other vendors' products into Vodafone's 3G network, which is expected to commence service in the first quarter of 2002...>
Vodafone [Verizon] has pressed for a year or three for a standard for 3G as common as is possible to enable the greatest compatibility possible between their GSM and cdmaOne worlds and to enable worldwide roaming with the least difficulty. They have the biggest worldwide network. NTT is a piffling little operator compared with the world and the NTT 3G W-CDMA effort is NOT the same as the European version or the Vodafone version.
Notice very carefully and think about it...Ericsson has agreed to work with Vodafone to enable the introduction of other vendor's products into Vodafone's 3G network.
What does 'other vendor's products' mean? Obviously they expect to offer a wide range of handsets, but I don't think that's the point. They presumably don't want a network which can only be expanded or altered using only Ericy products. They are looking for ecumenical. I think what they are really driving at is that Vodafone wants the 3G standard to be as much like cdma2000 as possible and they want HDR to run on it!
HDR is the crux!
If Vodafone can get cdma2000 disguised as W-CDMA then they'll be able to spring HDR on the market very early. That will give GPRS operators a very big pain in the neck. Okay, Vodafone is also a GPRS operator, but Chris Gent has probably read the book which says that it's best not to take the whole company down by defending an obsolete technology.
A day or two later, the ITU was blowing their own trumpet, Message 13717743 making sure everyone thought they were setting some W-CDMA worldwide standard [not the NTT version which is a Japanese enclave effort]. In reality, I think Vodafone and Ericy have stitched up Nokia, NTT, ITU and ETSI. Nokia is now up the 3G creek without a paddle!
No wonder Nokia is joining the whining that the 3G auctions are awful and won't leave enough money for building infrastructure. What an absurd concept! Vodafone is planning a 'speedy rollout of our UK 3G network'. That means they think they'll be able to fund it and make money from it.
What good news! Now we just need to discover exactly what the differences will be between Vodafone/Ericy W-CDMA and the cdma2000/HDR/1X/2X/MC version. My bet is that HDR will work just fine on Vodafone's UK network.
Meanwhile, Unicom is trying a DDI trick. Yawn...
If Unicom wants this IPO to fly, they better talk up CDMA a bit more than GSM. Investors won't want to put a lot into ancient 20th century technology like GSM. Message 13717662
DDI has stitched up NTT which is now likely to be [along with one other 3G supplier in Japan] the only user of their special weird W-CDMA version even though they have tried some monkey business with a Nederlands phone company. DDI tricked NTT into thinking Japan would go all NTT version and the last minute switcheroo and double-cross was interesting. As Tero said, it was really a foregone conclusion that DDI would go with cdma2000. Same that it's really a foregone conclusion for Unicom, but they need to do some hissing and roaring first. Same for Korea. The royalty battles are over for the attempts to get Q! to buckle and make their IP even more absurdly cheap. GSM royalties are huge [about 15% for a new entrant] and it's a very inefficient method. The wonderful CDMA royalties with huge 3G data rates should be 15% but philanthropic Q! is charging only 5% or so.
Mqurice
PS: Anyone fancy a massacre in the Q! stream? Check out price action in G! today. Some are suggesting it's a short squeeze = up 30% today. |
