This was sent to me today via Email(doubt my friend made it up).
USE OF CDMA UNLIKELY - [Wall Street Journal, online.] A Chinese telephone
company slated for one of the country's largest stock listings appears
unlikely to deploy a mobile-phone technology it agreed to license from a
U.S. company. The trouble with the new technology is just one of many
problems that China United Telecommunications, or Unicom as it is widely
known, has faced in recent years. Unicom reached a "framework agreement"
in February with Qualcomm. Unicom was to license Qualcomm's technology,
called CDMA, to build a nationwide mobile-phone network for 10 million
subscribers by the end of this year. The deal would have given Qualcomm
access to the world's third-biggest mobile-phone market. Within a week of
the agreement, however, the Chinese government ordered Unicom to delay its
plans. Now, it appears the deal with Qualcomm is imperiled. The world
will move to new, "third generation" standards in as little as two years,
driving the proposed "second generation" CDMA network toward obsolescence.
Critics in China increasingly argue against building an expensive new
system for such a short period. Even Unicom executives privately doubt the
wisdom of building a CDMA system now, people close to the company say. The
government created Unicom in 1994 to spur competition, which until then was
nonexistent. "I think the Chinese government in the last year or so has
given Unicom greater support than in the past," says Arthur Kobler,
president of AT&T China. |
