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Technology Stocks : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ruffian who wrote (2105)	10/7/1999 9:39:00 PM
From: quidditch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13582

Ruffian, thanks. Seems like my information was good after all. ERICY must be very bitter at the loss of this contract (GSM), as at one point it was the only vendor pitching the deal, when Unefon ran into problems financing purchase of its spectrum at auction. (Did anyone say Nextwave?) As far as Unefon, the following is significant: Unefon plans to establish immediate market presence due to its distribution agreement with Elektra (NYSE: EKT, BMV: ELEKTRA), Mexico's largest specialty retailer, and its advertising agreements with TV Azteca (NYSE: TZA, BMV: TVAZTCA), one of two private television broadcasters in Mexico. The idea here is for Unefon/NT to erect the base station towers/modems on the roofs of the Elekra stores, which have pretty much nationwide coverage and good saturation in Mexico's major cities--not just DF, Monterrey and Guadalajara but the second tier cities as well. This will allow for an efficient and fairly rapid buildout of the system. Unefon aims to be a lower cost provider than, for example, Iusacell of Pegaso, and the Elektra strategy will help in that regard. One can only guess at how competitive the bidding for this was: $480 million deal, with NT making available $600 million in vendor financing. I wonder if this has a vendor commitment impact on Q? We'll hear the the Q4 CC in about three and a half weeks' time. Chalk up another for CDMA. Yes! Everyone is probably watching the Yankees, and I'm friggin around here. Best. Steve