RAMSEY: WARNING - Politics and Religion follows.
Frank, this is good, some disagreement! Nothing worse than a self-congratulatory religious crowd! Jim Lurgio kindly offered some CDMA criticism for a time, but seems to have been converted.
My argument is substantial technical advantage. Not 5% or some piffling difference. We are talking big capacity and quality improvements over GSM.
Late to market simply means there has to be a significant advantage. A piffling advantage will stop something which is late to market. But BIG differences are hard to stop. Customers won't ask for CDMA, well they might but that will only be when they associate it with what they DO want, cheap, long battery life, good sound, small, use anywhere, data capable, no dropped calls and other features.
So there will be customer demand. Where GSM competes directly with CDMA, customers will move to CDMA. It will be economic for GSM suppliers to change to CDMA when they see their customer base eroding. China is the most important case where decisions are being made between CDMA and GSM. I guess you are bullish on CDMA because you think it has major advantages over other systems.
In New Zealand, we have analog, TDMA and GSM competing in a highly deregulated environment, with no ax to grind for local suppliers as there aren't any. Even here, it will be a while before CDMA can find a foothold. Infrastructure prices will have to come down closer to GSM prices. It would also need to start off as a niche marketer, supplying service in Auckland with dual mode phones for people who want to travel. Most people don't need roaming. The great bulk of their calls are made from a single metropolitan area. To save money, they'll use a cheap, high quality, local calling service.
Where you have statist control, briibery, bureaucracy and other such imposts on the public, it is more difficult. Europe is still in thrall to statism, with religious fervour in favour of STANDARDISATION across Europe with BUREAUCRATS having very important jobs and FREE TRADE being a type of perversion akin to child molestation. I have sat in a room with a crowd of them. Feeling like a Christian in the Colosseum. Did you know they even insist on a standard banana bend? And I think CDMA can get in there? Hahahahaha!!
I know it seems daft to think they'll accept CDMA, but pressure will build. Philips is producing IS95 chips already. Siemens is after B-CDMA. They have high density cities which would benefit from CDMA. As capacity is reached and costs come down, they will be faced with a different picture. To blithely continue with GSM as people abandon analog in droves is unlikely. Don't forget, twice as much infrastructure, twice as many cellsites, fewer customer benefits. People are already sick of these damn antennae everywhere. Pressure will be on from town planners to go to CDMA. There isn't really anything "European" about GSM other than Ericsson who are from Sweden which the English, French, Spanish, Turks and Greeks couldn't care less about.
The crunch in Paris and London comes as capacities are reached. Will they overlay with cheap high quality CDMA or stick with the horseshoe? Why couldn't a cellular provider in Istanbul set up CDMA for downtown and dual mode phones for out and about?
I can see mechanisms for GSM to be eroded even in Europe. Europe is not quite as homogenous as the bureaucrats are trying to make it.
Maurice |
