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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ramsey Su who wrote (33082)	6/24/1999 11:57:00 AM
From: kech	Respond to of 152472

Ramsey - I think you are right that it is this Omnipoint deal that has the Q market shaken up. The 3g is the end game but it is several years away before companies like T and Omnipoint would switch. I always figured Omnipoint's angle on the east coast was to provide service to people who are frequent travelers to Europe and would want a GSM phone that would work in both places. Does anybody know if their phones can be used in Europe? Maybe with the switch of a card to reprogram? Anyway the cash infusion by Hutchison Wampoa into Omnipoint does indicate they are going to scale up Omnipoint much further and keep the GSM beachhead alive. This hurts too because isn't Hutchison Wampoa a user of CDMA in Hong Kong? I guess the opportunity to forge a third standard national network is more attractive than the technical advantages. If they do have a nitch in the roaming to Europe market this would also mean they could charge higher prices and still get customers despite their capacity disadvantages.

To: Ramsey Su who wrote (33082)	6/24/1999 4:28:00 PM
From: Cigar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

I admit to being an Omnipoint user for frequent Europe travel, even if it's my investment in Q that pays for frequent European travel. With Bosch phone, service is automatic in the US and most (but not all) European countries without changing cards, quality is as good as US TDMA providers (but not as good as CDMA), and with an outgoing call price range from .75 a minute (Israel) to $4.00 a minute (Ukraine), costs are favorable to I, and may be competitve with G; further, calls from US to France, UK etc at .29 a minute are very competitive even with land line providers, and blow Sprint overseas pricing (at least in my market) away. Omni's coverage footprint in the US is, at best, spotty, but is adequate on the East Coast. GSM may be as obsolete as Aunt Tessie's Edsel, but it is, for the moment, adequate for what I use it for when I travel.