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To: Caxton Rhodes who wrote (40565)	9/13/1999 11:40:00 AM
From: Don Edgerton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

COuld this be part of the problem. THis part looks extremely positive " China has 22 million cellular phone subscribers, mainly using the European GSM standard, but Beijing has said it is ready to adopt the rival U.S.-backed Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) standard." Last company I remember who dropped from a conference was CYMI. Stock was killed and took a while to come back, But it did have demand problems at the time. Saturday September 11 1:48 AM ET Telecom Group Offers China Mobile Standard By Jeremy Page BEIJING (Reuters) - An international consortium of telecommunications firms said Friday it had joined the battle for China's potentially vast mobile phone market by offering a new technology standard. The Universal Wireless Communications (UWC) consortium met Chinese officials and telecommunications firms this week to promote the Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) standard, UWC president Sheila Mickool told Reuters in an interview. China has 22 million cellular phone subscribers, mainly using the European GSM standard, but Beijing has said it is ready to adopt the rival U.S.-backed Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) standard. Mickool said she was confident there was room for another player in the market. ``I would escalate our activities in China based on what I've seen and heard over the last few days,' she said. UWC is a non-profit international association of more than 100 carriers and vendors supporting TDMA, including AT&T Wireless Services and BellSouth Cellular Corp of the United States. TDMA is the dominant technology standard in the Americas, with 18.5 million subscribers at the end of 1998, UWC said. TDMA offered greater capacity and flexibility and the ability to switch wireless users automatically between analog and digital channels without disruption to service, said UWC vice president of marketing Chris Pearson. But more significantly, it was an open standard -- with no patent -- and would soon be compatible with GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) networks, he said. From the second half of 2000, a single mobile phone would be able to switch automatically between a GSM network in China and a TDMA network in Brazil, for example, he said. ``There's an opportunity, even if they (China) don't deploy TDMA, to be involved in the process of its development and manufacturing of the telephones, Pearson said. ``Because there is no IPR (intellectual property rights) issue, there is also a possibility that it would be good for the manufacturing development and economic development of China.' Pearson said UWC hoped to avoid the growing pains of CDMA in China. Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji told U.S. officials in March Beijing would allow China Unicom, one of China's two telecommunications service providers, to build CDMA networks. But two ministries have since barred the rollout, according to industry sources who said China was trying to force firms into divulging CDMA technology in exchange for market access. CDMA was developed by Qualcomm Inc (Nasdaq:QCOM - news) of the United States, but Sweden's Ericsson bought its infrastructure division in March this year. U.S. officials have also said China was holding CDMA hostage until Washington and Beijing reached a deal on entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Mickool said WTO entry would be helpful, but not crucial, to the success of TDMA in China. She said she expected China to have 35 million cellphone subscribers by the end of 1999 and that number would grow by at least one million per month over the next few years. Meetings with the Ministry of Information Industry and Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, and with telecommunications firms China Mobile and China Unicom had indicated Beijing was interested in multiple standards, she said. ``We may be late, GSM may be the dominant platform and Unicom may have chosen CDMA, but we have a groundswell of global support for GSM TDMA interoperability,' said Pearson.