No, Jon, you are not losing your mind... although apparently the same can not be said about NOK's GPRS engineers.
I suppose with enough rubber bands and chewing gum they can get GPRS to work better - a la the way TDMA's been tweaked here in the States.
So a (maybe hypothetical, maybe not) question to ask is, would it be better for the Q if the Musketeers just chucked GPRS right now (and probably TDMA-EDGE if they can't get GPRS to work) and devoted all their energies to promoting the "worldwide domination" of W-CDMA, from which the Q will get substantial royalties, but maybe not a lot of ASIC sales, or would it be better to have them screw around with the baling wire fixes for their version of 2.5G and trying to sell that stuff while leaving the Q a slightly more open field for MC?
One thing we do know about the Musketeers and their faithful followers is that their collective monster political and marketing machines can push "barely good enough" technology a long way into various markets. And if you've read the T people recently, why they're damn proud of it!
So just because GPRS has some biggie trial problems (apparently at least some of the testers must be equipped with portable fire extinguishers) and the prototype WCDMA mobile handset is approximately the size of a Chevy Suburban, doesn't mean that these clever lads won't still sell systems, sign contracts, and generally try to lock out competitors using whatever means possible.
On the bright side, Verizon and Sprint basically dropping NOK handsets is perhaps a harbinger that at least some carriers maybe aren't as dim witted and gullible to their traditional vendors' claims as past history would indicate. However, this is in a fairly open and competitive U.S. market versus the PTT mentality still prevailing elsewhere.
It does look like Q is going to be first to market in the 100kps+ device range, but in the bureaucratic (and "old boy") telcoms world, alas, this is no guarantee of victory. |
