Jim, Good points. I must admit, I don't like to see Qualcomm feeling the need to put warnings about forward looking statements when others don't. But from the little I understand of the USA legal system [Texaco got sued for billions, Exxon billions for a spill, OJ gets off, McDonalds got sued for millions for making coffee hot and so on it goes], it is well worth being very careful. I recall when first seeing a USA prospectus, [Qualcomm's] how surprised I was by the lists and details of all the risks laid out in gory detail. Maybe this latest move is another example of how Qualcomm is ahead of the game.
The advantages over TDMA/GSM are not just the call quality and battery life but also the price [which is a reflection of the infrastructure and frequency costs as well as handset cost]. NextWave Telecom have already won on frequency assuming they know what they are doing and are planning really cheap "minutes of use" for sale to retailers.
Don't forget some other benefits:
Replacement cost of batteries lower
Pacemaker, hearing aid and other interference lower
Risk of brain cancer and other physiological interference lower
[though I shouldn't be saying such a thing as I don't know that there is any risk at all, but just for fun, there it is: go see Intercell]
Better building penetration
No busy signals with dynamic pricing control [I just made that one up]
Better security against cloning and tapping
Future proofing [analog and GSM will shut down sometime]
Smaller, lighter, handsets [because batteries can be smaller instead of longer lasting]
Dynamic power control is such a neat thing, everyone will simply want to own one, and the CDMA handset overall because it is such a funky thing.
Continuing technical improvement as GSM is way ahead on the learning curve and will run out of new learning years sooner than CDMA.
When combined with Globalstar, geolocation will increase safety and security while making navigation straightforward. [I just made that up too].
With new, low power, 0.2um conductor separations on chips and smaller still to come, such as Texas Instruments have announced, battery life and computing power can increase much more, further improving power use and call quality. [Of course TDMA will also benefit from that, but not as much as CDMA which is much more complex]
Fewer dropped calls, less interference, soft handoff.
Yep, I think that is enough to finish off analog, TDMA and GSM, which won't be dumped, so much as slowly wither on the vine. I still have our 1974 Toyota, which is gradually withering away too. One day it will get a flat battery and we'll dump it.
I'd forgotten just what a huge range of benefits CDMA has!! And those are just the ones I can remember.
Maurice |
