A little history for those who might enjoy a look back in time. How wrong can one be? He was right about one thing, though, I can't think of single GSM operator that has decided to go with CDMA2000 for 3G. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.
To:Gregg Powers who wrote (17454)
From: tero kuittinen Saturday, Oct 31, 1998 1:35 PM
View Replies (4) | Respond to of 97807
Here's that sinking feeling again... we are having the round 76 in this debate. I'm going to justify this apparently obsessive and self-defeating behaviour by reviewing the recent developments that are highly positive for W-CDMA and actually move the debate forward.
* I have been stating that both Nokia and Ericsson have been conducting CDMA research for nearly a decade. This has not been widely accepted, even though anyone who visits Helsinki and reads old articles of "Helsingin Sanomat" about Nokia's CDMA research project in 1990 - 1992 can easily verify this claim. Now US patent office has verified some of Ericsson's CDMA claims. Conclusion: we don't know how important these patents are but this confirms that Ericsson had CDMA research around 1990. The claims that W-CDMA is a response to Qualcomm is absurd: the Nordic companies started their CDMA research in the late eighties. The fact that they did not commercialize it then takes nothing away from their expertise in this field.
* The power of standardization has been completely ignored by most of the Qualcomm fans. It should be obvious by now that China will never get a comprehensive IS-95 coverage. It would take four years for CDMA operators to match the current GSM coverage. Both India and China with their 2 billion people are breaking for GSM. Together with Europe and American GSM this means that GSM has the critical momentum to hit 1 billion subscribers. There is no slow-down in GSM sales predicted by members of this thread. The GSM subscription projections have been revised upwards *every* year this decade. Every year. This standard has been more successful than estimated by GSM proponents themselves. I have never said that IS-95 could not be a niche success. But that is all that is shaping up as. IS-95 cannot even slow down the creaky American TDMA... ATT showed 74% growth in subscriptions last quarter.
* W-CDMA is meant to supplement GSM for users with high-bandwidth needs. The fact that CDMA was chosen as the technology for 3G solution is a *victory* for Nokia and Ericsson, don't you get it? Siemens and Alcatel were trying to push through a TDMA-based 3G solution. It was the insistence of Nokia and Ericsson that persuaded ETSI. Persuaded them to adopt a technology that has been developed by Nokia for almost ten years now. You may think that Nokia's CDMA commitment isn't real and that CDMA somehow belongs to Qualcomm... but I have personally discussed with Nokia engineers who have worked on CDMA for over five years. I know I'm right on this count, you are relying on Qualcomm spin.
* Every passing week underlines the universal appeal of W-CDMA. Trying to portrait this as Qualcomm-Ericsson grudge match does not work anymore. Nortel is building a big bucks W-CDMA network to test the standard. Hitachi is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into W-CDMA handset development. Toshiba is doing the same. Nokia is building both a test network and first W-CDMA handsets in China. Korean companies like Samsung have jumped aboard. The American CDMA2000 coalition does not look all that robust when compared to heavyweights like NTT-Docomo, Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Philips, Alcatel, Motorola, Matsushita, Toshiba, etc.
* The question of whether W-CDMA is better suited to be overlaid on GSM than Qualcomm tech is too absurd to contemplate. Hello? Nokia was one of the companies who created GSM. And now they are launching a standard carefully tailored to be the upgrade for GSM. And you are asking me how come I know that W-CDMA really dovetails GSM well enough? There is only one company in this solar system who really knows GSM well enough to create both networks and phones that utilize this standard close to optimal. And you are implying that perhaps Qualcomm's technology might be a better upgrade? I'd like to see one (1) GSM operator who is ready to gamble on this. Those hundreds of millions of GSM users will need an upgrade to 3G one of these days. And it will not come from a company that has never produced any GSM gear.
* CDMA handset situation is as grim as ever. So now there is a Motorola CDMA model that has nearly 50% of the standby time of a Nokia GSM or TDMA phone. Only it costs twice as much and is shipped initially in volumes of hundreds of units. Of course this price discrepancy will not last... Nokia has alreay started to sell the 51xx series in North America, so pretty soon you can get a CDMA Startac with inferior specs for *four* times higher price.
It's interesting to see how dismissive people on this thread are about the better quality GSM phones. The attitude seems to be: sure the GSM phones are better made and designed and priced... but IS-95 rules! Yee-haw! After all this time, I still don't get it. Isn't best possible phones at low prices supposed to be what this business is all about? Isn't everything else just noise?
Somebody wrote that the ultimate benefit of CDMA is that it will be two cents cheaper per minute for the end user. Is this what IS-95 is reduced to? It can't deliver superior handsets, it can't deliver global roaming like GSM 900/1900, next year it can't even deliver more capacity when the new Nokia GSM base stations arrive. But it might be two cents cheaper per minute to operate.
I remember a time when there was talk about revolution on this thread.
I remember people talking about overwhelming superiority of IS-95, about European operators ripping out GSM gear in disgust, about total domination in USA as GSM and TDMA start losing subscribers, about the conquest of China and India, about the huge data rates in space age phones leaving GSM in dust. What I'm now seeing is a slow retreat from earlier goals, cloaked in denial and obfuscation. What I am seeing is a total GSM victory in China, Nokia's glorious success in USA (1 million digital phones sold in 1997... 5 million in 1998, source: Carnegie), hot 40% growth in Europe. What I'm seeing is 61xx as the best selling phone model in USA, Europe and China in 1998.
IS-95 splintered the focus of Motorola, Lucent and Nortel just as GSM was taking off. It destroyed the once promising handset divisions of all these North American companies - they could not compete against GSM specialists like Nokia and CDMA phones were too complicated to make. If this is how CDMA revolutionizes the global telecom market, I want more.
Tero
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To:SKIP PAUL who wrote (17486)
From: tero kuittinen Saturday, Oct 31, 1998 3:27 PM
View Replies (2) | Respond to of 97808
Sprint managers may not be fools... but I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that they did not expect to have to wait until 1999 before Motorola starts their volume shipments of CDMA phones. They did not expect to see a TDMA model as the best-selling phone in USA in 1999. They did not expect to see GSM to offer global roaming for US subscribers in 1998. They did not expect GSM to catch up in voice quality with Nokia's EFR technology and thus erase one of the key advantages of IS-95. They did not expect to see CDMA phones have more severe weight problems than Anna Nicole Smith.
CDMA is doing well in USA... but it is not doing anywhere near as well as anticipated. At this pace it will not reach 50% market share among digital standards in America by 2003. And this will be a major victory for TDMA and GSM.
Tero |
