jim, thanks for those little Air Touch and Bell Atlantic tidbits, tasty! I hate to continue with this on-topic trend, but . . . .
Seems to me the Mighty Q is trying to position itself as the LU of the Wireless World, a sky-based infrastructure/technology provider to the carriers blasting bits and bytes through the ether. To do that, they need to be as soup-to-nuts as possible, handsets to Eudora if you will. Besides, how else will Maurice's Anita [TM] become a reality if the Q doesn't do the whole enchilada?
You all should zip on over to the G* thread where BrianH is on steroids locked in mortal combat with the dreaded Dragonfly, but also posting CDMA news which seems to indicate that spread spectrum is absolutely, positively THE technology of choice for the satellite crowd. If satellite telephony/data winds up being as significant as some pretty smart dudes are predicting, I think this is just an enormous plus for the Q.
On the ground, we've got WLL the potential of which is just mind boggling. But the price to play is that the Q has to graduate from the school of hard knocks by putting the base stations in the Congo and nowheresville Russia (and getting their employees busted for the privilege.)
Not long ago, I was bemoaning Eudora and WLL loser infrastructure contracts and suggesting that the Q might want to unload them in order to, as the biz school boys say, concentrate on their core competencies. But if you define CC as the WHOLE FRIGGING WIRELESS WORLD, or WFWW as we techies like to say, then these components are vital to the mosaic.
Having unloaded LU recently (ok, ok so I'm not a market timer), and recycled some of the proceeds into more Q, I've tried to objectively examine my sanity, never an easy task. Bottom line is that I think the Q's got a chance to become the LU (say that a few times boys and girls), and that it's a whole lot easier to expand capital from the Q's current valuation than from Lucent's. It tore my heart out to sell cuz LU is just an outrageously great company, but voting with Ramsey's green eye shades on, I elected to go with the boys from San Diego. OK, I will now stop singing to the choir. Mike Doyle |
