From the article, it would seem really stupid for DoCoMo to adopt a w-cdma standard compatible with IS-95 but replace its entire system for 20 million subscribers with GSM underlay. It doesn't take much to read between the lines.
>>>>>EXCERPTS<<<<<<<
Dow Jones Newswires
AWSJ: Japan Firms Clash With Qualcomm
Over Cellular Standard
By WAYNE ARNOLD
Dow Jones Newswires
Staff Reporter
"JAPAN, allied with two European powers amid a brewing trans-Atlantic
conflict, finds itself facing threats of American retaliation.
'... Capacity is an urgent problem in Japan, too. DoCoMo has more than 20 million customers, making it the world's largest operator. But Japan uses a homegrown standard for digital cellular that has kept the Japanese from using their phones abroad, something GSM users have long been able to do. So DoCoMo has developed a new standard called Wideband-CDMA. While similar to Qualcomm's CDMA, W-CDMA uses a wider range of radio frequency to transmit phone calls, increasing capacity for both customers and data.
'DoCoMo won Ericsson and Nokia's support for W-CDMA by agreeing to run
its backbone network on GSM. The three companies [DoCoMo, Nokia & Ericsson] spent last year lobbying for support from Asia's GSM operators, and early this year managed to convince Europe's telecommunications-standards body - ETSI - to accept W-CDMA together with a standard backed by Germany's Siemens and Alcatel of France. Japan's standards body has submitted W-CDMA to the International Telecommunications Union, now headed by a former Japanese telecommunications minister, for its endorsement next year as a global
standard. DoCoMo plans to roll out its own W-CDMA service by early 2001.
'W-CDMA doesn't work with Japan's current standard, which means DoCoMo
will have to completely replace its network.
....
'DoCoMo says it is considering whether to make W-CDMA compatible with
CDMA. Ericsson opposes it, though, saying it would only slow down
development and compromise W-CDMA's performance...." |
