Chaz,
<< The usual hatchet job >>
You have commented several times on the WSJ's attitude towards CDMA in general, and Qualcomm in particular.
Earlier today I posted off an article by Ira Brodsky to Tero, written earlier this year, called "Beyond the Mudslinging" by Ira Brodsky which presented a counterpoint to Tero's insistence that a government mandated single standard is somehow better for humanity than open competition between wireless technologies.
I then ran across this "ancient" letter to the Wall Street Journal by Ira.
I thought you would get a chuckle out of it since it predates the commercial launch of CDMA in the US by several months:
>> Letter to the Editor, The Wall Street Journal - September 6, 1996
Dear Editor,
I read Quentin Hardy's article (Sept. 6, 1996) on San Diego-based Qualcomm and its controversial Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cellular telephone technology with great interest. While the article did an admirable job of outlining one of the most emotional debates ever to confront high-tech industry, it was at times misleading and generally one-sided.
The main argument against CDMA can be made against any new technology: it is "unproven." Yes, it took six years of development before the first commercial CDMA service was introduced. But the article failed to mention that its main rival, Europe's Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), did not achieve commercial operation until eleven years after its development got underway. Curiously, GSM proponents promised commercial rollout in 1991 but failed to throw the 'on' switch until 1993 -- the same two-year delay presented as evidence that CDMA technology has serious problems.
Mr. Hardy states that "many experts" feel the CDMA network operated by Hutchison in Hong Kong is "inconclusive" because it only has 50,000 active subscribers. What the article fails to note is that all 50,000 subscribers are being served by just one wideband CDMA channel -- about 15% of the radio spectrum available to cellular telephone operators in the U.S. The Hong Kong system has already proven that CDMA delivers at least six times analog capacity and twice the capacity of competing TDMA (e.g., GSM) systems. Remember, this is the very first commercial CDMA network, and densely-populated Hong Kong represents one of the world's most challenging cellular radio environments.
There are a number of other one-sided comments. MCI Communications Chairman Bert Roberts is quoted making scathing remarks about CDMA; the article fails to mention his firm just entered an agreement to purchase 10 billion minutes of CDMA airtime from Qualcomm spinoff NextWave Telecom. Mr. Hardy tells us that, privately, at least one executive at a company producing CDMA network equipment is very nervous about the technology; however, each of the firms mentioned also makes equipment for the rival GSM standard. And an executive from American Personal Communications is portrayed as skeptical about both CDMA and Irwin Jacobs; but there is no mention that his firm has announced plans to replace their TDMA network with CDMA!
Yes, Qualcomm has made brash claims regarding CDMA's capacity. But your readers need to know that digital cellular capacity claims are based, in large part, on voice encoding technologies shared by both camps. Three years after its commercial introduction, GSM is still only delivering half the capacity it promises with its vaporware "half-rate vocoder."
Perhaps Irwin Jacobs is a master salesman. On the other hand, many CDMA critics sound like the old vacuum tube aficionados who couldn't bring themselves to accept new-fangled transistors. The good news is that this technology war will be settled by the market -- not the government technocrats who made GSM a mandatory standard throughout Europe.
Sincerely,
Ira Brodsky
President, Datacomm Research Company
Wilmette, Illinois <<
Note: Ira Brodsky is President of Datacomm Research Co., Wilmette, Ill. His books include, "Wireless: The Revolution in Personal Telecommunications," (May 1995) & "Wireless Computing : A Manager's Guide to Wireless Networking" (December 1997).
Ira is, I would say, a man of some vision.
- Eric - |
