Help Needed in Answering Terrapin's Questions:
Your questions touch upon areas which I have learned little
if anything about.
One question inspired by the following quote deals with the extent to which wireless carriers need a server infrastructure to provide wireless internet access. Now that I ponder your question a bit, I realize that Virgin Mobile's example provides one answer. Richard Branson's company is, to my knowledge, the first truly virtual wireless carrier. They completely outsource all of their wireless networking needs and function purely as a marketing company. (Incidently, InfoSpace, the parent company of SI, provides their wireless internet content directly from InfoSpace's own servers.) If a wireless carrier doesn't provide its own content, and thus has no need for content related servers, I don't know if it needs other servers just to provide the internet connection or if the content provider provides these or else some other company. Here's the quote:
Europolitan's Svensson could not immediately explain the problems with logging onto the Internet, but said the slow speed could be related to the capacity constraints of the WAP server which links phones with the Internet.
I don't know who makes Nokia's Bluetooth chips. Unlike Ericsson, Nokia doesn't seem to possess a Microelectronics division that actually manufactures, probably, because unlike Ericsson, Nokia doesn't have a long history as a military contracter. I would expect that Nokia can design its own chips, or at least have a hand in their design. If anyone is to do their manufacturing, Texas Instruments would be the obvious partner. Last fall, Nokia announced some sort of partnership with Telson, I think, to provide CDMA chipset for the Korean market, I think. Some Qualcomm shareholder may correct me about this. I hardly remember it and wasn't paying close attention. Hopefully someone with more knowledge might lend some insight about this topic as well. |
