Well Jim, I too have my sources. Thanks for the comments from Bill. I must say it is a privilege to have such an energetic and knowledgeable commentator appearing indirectly in the CDMA stream. I'll make my comments separately, but meanwhile, I was contacted by Ira Brodsky who pointed out the following, published unedited in entirety with his approval:
Maurice,
Here is my brief reply to Bill Frezza's recent message. Feel free to circulate:
Response to a message from Bill Frezza, who claims he is unable to post here (isn't that a fraudulent claim? Anyone can post here. <g>):
"Voice quality on the Qualcomm QCP-800 phone operating at 13 Kbps is, in truth, quite good."
Yes, and this is on a system that is not fully commercial. You have also not mentioned CDMA's outstanding noise canceling technology.
"More importantly, I believe that all of my statements about CDMA capacity have now been vindicated. Bell Atlantic is experiencing a 6x capacity gain over AMPS. Airtouch is claiming 6x - 10x in LA and you can use your own judgement as to which end of this range they are actually achieving... Nobody, nowhere is getting 10x-20x AMPS and nobody ever will. But hey, the system sales have already been made, so this bogus claim can now be quietly dropped."
But it isn't being dropped. Everyone in the CDMA camp now claims they will achieve at least 15x analog. BTW, the 6x - 10x claim is not an invitation to pick a number. The capacity realized in a CDMA system varies by location. AirTouch is achieving 10x analog in many locations; 6x is the minimum.
"Notwithstanding Airtouch's brilliant ambush PR initiative in San
Diego, it is becoming clear that CDMA has been a total failure at 800 MHz. Airtouch's "controlled migration" plan is a scam - an excuse to shield these products from the public for as long as possible. All that effort to migrate 15% of their traffic to digital, which probably equates to less than 3% of their customers? Give me a break. Airtouch has been "commercial" in LA since May and all they have is a few hundred customers? That represents a couple of hours worth of new activations on APC's TDMA system in Washington DC."
Fifteen percent of AirTouch's traffic is more than APC's entire traffic in Washington, DC. [That was a gross understatment! APC in Wash, DC will likely *never* reach 15% of Airtouch's LA traffic.] And it probably represents as many, if not more, users. All this on one carrier consuming just 15% of AirTouch's spectrum. {And less than 7% of APC's spectrum.] Is it a scam? I hope you are absolutely certain -- since you have publicly accused several individuals of fraud. Of course, you will never admit you were wrong about CDMA's capacity, no matter what happens, because to do so would be an admission that you slandered Andrew Viterbi, Craig Farrell, and others.
"As for the many promised advantages of CDMA, when the dust settles there is going to be one and only one differential benefit left standing, and that is battery life. (I really am getting 5 hours of talk time on my QCP-800.) Granted, this is important to heavy users."
But just a few months ago you stated CDMA had NO advantages. I guess this is progress. Five hours of talk time benefits all users -- not just heavy users. In fact, limited battery life has been a crucial limitation to all forms of two-way wireless communications until now.
[BTW, five hours of talk time is achieved through dynamic power control, which according to Frezza will never work.]
Ira Brodsky
Datacomm Research Company
Wilmette, Illinois |
