Received via PM [edited to protect the innocent]: <"Flarion certainly hasn't turned into a roaring success, or even a significant success. We Qualcomm shareholders are very used to a $billion here and a $billion there going down the gurgler of some new bright idea with little or no return -"
I've respected your posts before, but when I see stuff like this, I start to sigh.
A Flarion core technical team member from its inception right until Qualcomm botched it up completely told me that the lack of commercial Flash-OFDM success has nothing to do with the technology, it has everything to do with politics within Qualcomm and the CDMA royalty gravy train.
Furthermore, it is simply not true that the benefits of OFDMA over CDMA are marginal. But that's a long discussion.
Finally, OFDMA is not OFDM. >
Firstly, I plead ignorance, which is a major reason to post in SI = people who do know things helpfully correct false ideas.
Secondly, I wasn't saying why OFDM [flash version] didn't succeed, just that it didn't. Globalstar also didn't succeed and that had nothing to do with the system and technology. It was a marketing blunder and politics within Vodafone and the GSM gravy train.
Thirdly, I didn't write that the benefits of OFDM are marginal. The spectrum benefits over CDMA are substantial [Sier Geeks estimated, back in the day, perhaps 3x as good as CDMA or maybe it was 10x as good, or maybe even not a lot better for mobile voice]. My point was that as with the advantage of CDMA over TDMA, such an advantage is not enough because the spectrum advantage is only a minor part of the overall experience of the subscriber who pays the cash which feeds the whole upstream menagerie, of which spectrum cost is just a small portion and the spectrum saving even less.
Fourthly, TDMA isn't GSM either, but they are near enough to the same thing for government work. I guess that OFDM-A and OFDM are near enough to the same thing too. Analogue, TDMA, CDMA, OFDM, Pulsed Monocycles are the categories as far as I understand them. Within each there are subsets with a wide range of acronyms.
I remain Gung Ho for OFDMA, preferably in 450MHz.
edit.... I asked Google, which put me straight. OFDM and OFDMA are indeed quite different looking things. conniq.com
Mqurice |
