I would love to see figures to back up this claim.
I would love to see you move you pull your head out of the sand...but that's another story. This issue really isn't that difficult to understand. Yes, there's agreements with the Japanese and the Australians, but unless a Japanese visitor happens to be a DDI subscriber, or unless the Australian visitor happens to be a Telstra CDMA subscriber, the roaming agreements are, for the most part, worthless. Yes, there's a PDC/IS-95 phone in development, but I doubt that a large percentage of DoCoMo or SK Telecom subscribers will bother to buy it. You can't forget about China Mobile's subscribers either. Or Japan Telecom's. Or Hutchinson's GSM subscribers. This definitely isn't just about the Europeans. Likewise, even as W-CDMA/cdma2000 dual-modes get created, the majority of W-CDMA phones won't possess this level of functionality. By going for W-CDMA in new spectrum, and by maintaining IS-95 networks in existing spectrum, SK Telecom has all its bases covered. Although I still don't think that it'll economically justify the costs of building out a W-CDMA network, SK Telecom does have a lot to gain in terms of roaming revenues by making this move.
Eric |
