David:
I don't see the contradiction. Setting all the hyperbole aside for a moment, W-CDMA isn't some magical reinvention of CDMA. The wideband architecture provides for higher data rates with some specific trade-offs extracted from mobile voice. Some very smart people inside of QC see specific technical problems with the standard that could result in performance being markedly inferior to W-cdmaOne. But, under no scenario is W-CDMA likely to prove superior to IS-95 and its progeny.
Ericsson has been inserting specific "gimmicks" in the standard to preclude backward compatibility with IS-95. That's infuriating to QC because there is no technical benefit to these "gotchas" beyond the exclusion of IS-95 carriers. Now, if W-CDMA was compatible with existing spectrum availability in the Americans (which it IS NOT) AND U.S. operators were hell-bent on offering worldwide roaming, then it is conceivable that three years from now (when W-CDMA will be commercially available), some carrier might be willing to rip out his IS-95 infrastructure, pull in all his IS-95 compliant handsets, rebuild his network and give all his customers new phones (provided, at the same time, he could somehow obtain the frequency). As far as cdmaOne's growth is concerned, South America is much more likely to follow North America then Europe..so the Americas look like Fortress cdmaOne. cdmaOne is already in the ground in over thirty countries around the world. Don't you think that a number of operators would see cdmaOne as a attractive means to get a leg up on competitors waiting around for Ericsson and company to make W-CDMA commercially available (assuming that the latter standard isn't tied up it court)? I guess it's always possible that outside the America's every other country will get down on bended knee and accept the standard that Ericsson has dictated. It's conceivable; it's also conceivable that I could sleep with Claudia Schiffer tonight; it's not bloody likely, but it is conceivable.
If Ericsson wins and makes the standard non-backwards compatible, it will have, three years from now, an iteration of CDMA no better than what QC, Lucent and Nortel can sell you right now. The primary difference will be that the W-CDMA will be GSM compliant and Qualcomm's CDMA overlay for Europe will be a dead issue. Countries that have deployed TDMA-based GSM will be able to upgrade to CDMA-based GSM. In the intervening three years, cdmaOne will continue to take market share worldwide and IS-136 probably dies a slow and painful death. To penetrate the GSM-world, Qualcomm would have to invest in W-CDMA compliant equipment and that would be expensive and time consuming. But, the GSM world is currently CLOSED to Qualcomm, so the company's market opportunity is still improved.
Given ERICY's admission (during its conference call) regarding the possibility of licensing QC's IPR, chances are damn close to zero that Ericsson internally believes that it can circumvent QC's IPR and avoid paying royalties. This debate, therefore, is all about who is going to blink first.
My comment on the value of global roaming does not contradict my preceding explanation. The point was simply that "global" roaming is a much hyped commodity with fairly limited economic value. Simply put, the minutes of use deriving from such world travelers is such a pittance compared to local service, that I cannot imagine any North American operator concluding that it was in his economic interest to reconstitute his entire network to service this carriage trade.
Best regards,
Gregg |
