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To: JMD who wrote (635)	8/6/1999 5:04:00 PM
From: kech	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13582

Surfer Mike - I can't help to comment that McCaw had a lot of reasons to go with TDMA. It was reaching capacity shortages in LA, Chicago, and NY. TDMA was the only digital available. McCaw had one card up his sleave - he wanted to pursue a national footprint in cellular. Something that in retrospect has been truly visionary. Both ATT and Sprint PCS benefit enormously from this. To lock up this advantage he had to go with the digital technology that was available at the time. If he had waited, and didn't have the aspirations and commitment to develop the national footprint, would ATT really have paid so much for McCaw? I think not. I also think though, that it was the right thing to do for the other cellular providers to wait for CDMA. So the battle became first to market vs. better technology. The struggle continues to this day. But it wasn't a mistake for McCaw to take the side it took. I would argue this at the time and even in retrospect it hasn't been a mistake. In addition, CDMA was painfully late in becoming commercially deployed. TDMA had free reign for a long time. Granted, there were some problems with early TDMA too but for a long time they could advertise as THE "digital" provider. Nice for the marketing guys.

To: JMD who wrote (635)	8/6/1999 10:01:00 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13582

For some reason, I seem to recall that AT&T paid $5 billion for McCaw, but I may be wrong. Even that was too much. I also recall that by the time McCaw/AT&T was ready to deploy a TDMA system, the IS-95 standard (CDMA) had already been approved. It is unlikely, given the time that TDMA was actually deployed, that choosing CDMA would have entailed any major delays. Let's face it: McCaw/AT&T just made a poor decision, based more likely than any other reason, on the fact that the system was designed by a well known, established company, Hughes Electronics (GM Hughes), and not some newcomer, whose management wasn't well known to the stuffed shirts that run AT&T. Their loss, our gain!