JMD- you're right we should disagree more. The main point of my posts is not to get into a GSM/CDMA technical debate. This topic will continue to be debated by many for a long time and its my opinion both will continue to co-exist.
Rather, my point is that some of this technical stuff (combined with political) will most likely drive VOD's M&A activity and folks should not be surprised to see it happen. Because of global technology interoperability issues, I think AT&T Wireless, Nextel, Sprint PCS, and BEL/Verizon are all dead in the water regarding gaining major scale and scope advantages for global expansion and thus their strategic value to a VOD is very limited while VSTR/PTEL/etc. provide huge strategic and network synergies for VOD to leverage. (although I will concede that NXTL does have some limited international activity-no chance of being major player with iDen though)
Right now, there is alot of energy about the financial value of 3G licenses and whether or not the "data revolution" will pan-out to justify lofty costs for auctions and build-outs. Although I acknowledge this to be a major issue, for VOD, I see the ability of them to leverage their scale and scope via global footprint as a real opportunity to unlock huge amounts of hidden value for the VOD shareholders. I see the cost savings/margin expansion and incremental revenue opportunities of having a consistent global footprint as an equal if not bigger value creating driver for VOD going forward. It will take 5+ years to have 3G coverage that is anywhere comparable to 2G. IMO, Customers will not accept having to carry multiple devices to make/receive phone calls/receive data/etc. Thus, for VOD the advantages of having global, ubiquitous footprint are huge. Accomplishing this with a hybrid of 2G technologies (PDC in Japan, cdmaOne/analog in US, GSM in Europe) is a very sub-optimal solution. But we shall see. No doubt VOD is in the catbird seat to make it happen. |
