By the time w(ait)CDMA is ready, multi-mode phones and/or standards convergence will nullify the only valid argument in favor w(ait)CDMA - roaming.
Even if 3G/GSM tri-modes and quad-modes are common, Vodaphone could lose out on a bit of roaming revenue were it to chose cdma2000. Think about it this way; suppose you're an executive at France Telecom's wireless division, and your company's just begun the commercial rollout of its W-CDMA network. You need a roaming agreement with a British carrier. You know that some of your subscribers will end up buying handsets that allow them to roam on cdma2000 networks, but that others won't. The smartest course of action here is, without a doubt, the most fail-safe one, which would be to do roaming agreements, if possible, with a carrier that's using W-CDMA, just so that your company has all of its bases covered.
There's a couple of other more obvious reasons why a company such as Vodaphone would want to stick with a W-CDMA upgrade. The first is the ability to maintain a large part of their core infrastructure equipment save for their base stations. A number of posts have discussed this in far greater detail than I can. The base station and software upgrades that are going to come with W-CDMA are expensive as it is (didn't Vodaphone pay a few billion for those spectrum bands as well?); I'm sure that the notion of scrapping all of their switching equipment for 3G as well isn't a pleasing one to them. Then there's the standard economies of scale issue, which doesn't require any detailed explanation.
Last but not least, there's also the issue of the quality of the handsets Vodaphone's able to offer to its subscribers. As I already discussed in a prior post (http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=14159679), I really doubt that handsets will become commodities. With this said, it's obvious that all the world's leading handset manufacturers will want to first create versions of their handsets that utilize the technology chosen for the overwhelming majority of the world's wireles networks. Some of these handsets will also support cdma2000, some won't. Thus by not having immediate access to the leading-edge models offered by Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Samsung, etc., Vodaphone would be put at a significant disadvantage.
Given these circumstances, I think that it's safe to say that were W-CDMA rollouts to come late to market, companies like Vodaphone would most likely provide a "grace period" of at least one year, perhaps a little longer, before seriously considering a switch to cdma2000. Granted, if W-CDMA deployment somehow gets pushed back to, say, late 2004, then I wouldn't be surprised to see them make a switch, assuming that they haven't made any official equipment purchases by the time that they've made their decision. However, by all accounts, it appears that W-CDMA's set to roll out in the 2002-2003 time frame, around the same time as cdma2000, making this issue a moot point for now.
Eric
PS - I would agree with you that, assuming 3G muti-mode handsets are common, the South Korean operators might be paying too high of a price for what they're getting in return, at least unless SK Telecom's work with Nokia allows these companies to continue to utilize their IS/95 switching infrastructure. I suppose that this is more of a wait-and-see proposition. |
