To All:Qualcomm competition ?
Is anybody familiar with this company. They're privately held but, they are gaining a foot-hold in digital cellular.Are the QCOM competition? Are they using CDMA or something else ?
Article from latest Fortune Magazine 7/8/96:
AMERICAN PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS
Next-Generation Wireless Services
ERIN DAVIES
Bethesda, MD
Founded 1989
Revenues: $75 million (est.)
Employees: 430
Private
Use a cell phone? Chances are you endure static, dropped calls, and the occasional loss of privacy (think Charles, Camilla, Di, et
al.). Well, a new technology may soon lay your woes to rest.
In a joint venture with Sprint, TCI, Comcast, and Cox cable, American Personal Communications launched the country's first
personal communications services (PCS) network last November, in the Baltimore-Washington area. Marketed as Sprint
Spectrum, APC's network offers better clarity, reliability, and security than its cellular competition. The company's pocket-size
handsets also function as answering machines, pagers, and caller-ID devices--services that cost extra with ordinary cellular. Just six
months after the handsets hit the shelves, Sprint Spectrum boasts more than 80,000 subscribers.
PCS is essentially a new, improved version of cellular. Its networks are 100% digital, whereas most cellular systems are analog.
PCS networks have operated successfully in Europe for years, but regulations and a shortage of available radio spectrum kept them
out of the U.S. until 1995. The FCC awarded the company a "pioneer's preference" license because APC had been working on
PCS technology since 1989, allowing it to buy new spectrum in its area at a discount price of $102 million. Sprint, TCI, Comcast,
and Cox, which own 49% of APC, paid $2.1 billion for 29 other PCS licenses in last year's FCC auctions.
Chairman Wayne Schelle considers the partnership his ticket to becoming a force coast to coast. He'll need the help. Says John
Ledahl, director of wireless research at Dataquest in San Jose: "By 1998 the competition will make the current long-distance ad
wars pale in comparison." With AT&T Wireless, PacTel, Bell Atlantic/Nynex, and others expected to enter the PCS business soon,
the pressure is on.
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