Hi PCS. Perhaps I don't understand what you are doing here, but it looks to me like your logic won't work. The reason is that we are talking density of the population rather than total size. There are, I presume, significantly more sectors at work in Phoenix than in Salt Lake (well, now that I think about how spread out Salt Lake is, I wonder about that conclusion), but the point is that smaller cities don't necessarily need less spectrum as long as the same number of subscribers are handled per base station. Do you see what I'm saying? Thus, if your conclusion is that there should be a lot more spectrum available for data in smaller cities, I don't think that is necessarily true--though probably there is some extra there.
I have not yet been convinced that there will be any way LWIN could let me use my computer the way I currently do on their system. My new one lets me download MP3 files and where I used to find 20 MB per day pretty high, I now often go over 100 if I have been listening to my music files. At 10 cents per megabyte (and I guess that from the 2 cent figure QCOM has been advertising as the ultimate cost for operators--not retail price) I would be spending over $20 a day doing this. I don't think I will pay that much unless I'm on the road.
It also seemed to me that you had some extra doublings in your driveby estimate of how much more would be available a few posts back. The time I was talking about Mark was getting pretty expansive, but he seemed to be suggesting high teens on the existing CDMA 1A system, doubling with 1X (which seems to be a bit overstated as I've been hearing more like 1.7 times or something) and then a whole list of other possibilities which would bring the system up to 70% or so of all the covered pops. That was all I heard and some of that stuff is still out in the future. I'm trying to think of some way to conveniently see your suggestion that data is a lot more profitable than voice--it does not seem intuitively true to me, though when an operator gets the kind of money per megabyte DoCoMo and AWE are charging it is surely true. I just think that too will become a lot more competitive.
I'm not sure if I responded appropriately to your comment. It's late and I seem to be having some sort of reaction to some ibuprofen I just took. How is your determination to stay here on SI working out for you? I've been thinking about it and I think you should figure to post on Yahoo any time you feel like it rather than waiting for an invitation. You seem to understand the problem and can handle it well. Though I've not read the posts here on SI for today yet, it seemed like you were getting a pretty good bunch of posters from the SI crowd so maybe this will become a good place also. I thought of you often as I posted today and thought it must be awfully tempting to jump in at some of the things we say. Your words did generate a lot of interest as you saw. Also it seems like the extraneous posts are improving some though that may have more to do with a couple of up days than anything else. I don't think I want to be responsible for where you post and you know that I think you add a lot wherever you go. Artif seems to have disappeared and that concerns me as I really think he is a good poster also--just seemed to get hung up a little bit. I did enjoy talking more today since you weren't catching all the points before I got to them (ggg).
Lance |
