SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Technology Stocks : Nokia (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3287)1/15/2000 1:04:00 PM
From: Eric L  Respond to of 34857
 
Tero,

<< I'll get back to BAM on a later date. I need a drink or seven right now >>

Please do, and have a drink on me in appreciation of your contributions and and insights into the mobile wireless telephony scene.

Before you get back to me would you please read this post by Ruffian on the S&P Qualcomm thread.

127.0.0.1:3456/SI/~wsapi/investor/reply-12556705

The post contains an article called "BELL ATLANTIC CONNECTS WITH CELL-PHONE PLAN" by Walter S. Mossberg cliped from Mossberg's Mailbox column in Tech Center.

Mr. Mossberg's experiences with BAM are similar to my own. On several occassions as I've traveled around the US, I have been with other individuals who are using Sprint PCS, or At&T subscriptions and innevitably they "borrow" my phone either because because they have no signal, or they are frustrated with fast busys or dropped calls.

Hope you enjoyed those drinks. Maybe you wrote the sequel to the "Buck Rogers bust" I've been waiting so long for? ... or did I miss it somewhere?

- Eric -



To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3287)1/15/2000 1:49:00 PM
From: grok  Respond to of 34857
 
RE: <Of course this could be traced back to the notorious New Zealand effect.>

What is the New Zealand effect?



To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3287)1/15/2000 2:17:00 PM
From: brian h  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 34857
 
Tero,

Well. ERICY never told a lie on its disbelief about CDMA is working until ERICY and NOKIA invented the term WCDMA and purchased Q's infrastructures, Right?

Since you have so many contacts in Nokia world, could you tell us truthfully that Nokia was not in talks to buy QCOM's handset division? Or avoid the question as usual by telling us GSM rules the world stories.

I think IDC's stock up movement has everything to do with GSM, GPRS, EDGE, right? It is a baby Nokia!

Brian H.



To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3287)1/15/2000 4:47:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 34857
 
Tero, GPRS is vital to GSM because it will enable GSM operators to get into data for teleputers at reasonable cost and that investment will get them through 3 years and possibly 5 if they are lucky. They can't wait until the hopes for EDGE and VW40 are proven illusory [or even proven well-founded]. If those EDGE and later attempts at CDMA systems fail, it would be crazy for the GSM world not to have built GPRS. If they succeed, the investment in GPRS will have been well worthwhile.

There are such serious risks for the W-CDMA dream of a technical and commercial nature that it will be a brave service provider who waits around for it.

As already pointed out, the Hagfish world was very icky, dishonest, wrong, and generally not likely to be given Sainthood by the outgoing Pope. It's easy to see why people don't believe anything they say.

Nokia has been relatively 'clean' though a gang member of the 'let's steal Qualcomm's IP' club run by ETSI, NTT, Ericy and co. Tero, I'm sure you understand that when there is common interest, it doesn't take any complex 'conspiracy' to get people acting in concert. The simple model [and very accurate one] is that people act in what they think is their own best interests [though they will deny that till they are blue in the face and tooth]. That leads to riots and mobs. There is no need for a conspiracy for a mob to riot. They just see their interests and individually act. It LOOKS like concerted action, but it isn't.

You are enough of a scientist to understand that correlation is not causation or even association. Sure, there is plenty of mysticism in the USA [and even in the Coming Into Buy Range stream of consciousness]. That doesn't mean that all people who live in the USA subscribe to those manias. Not all put on Nikes to fly up to the spaceship on the other side of Hale-Bopp. Or joined David Koresh or Janet Reno for the shootout at the Wacko OK Corral.

GPRS will be good for teleputers as a start. But when HDR comes screaming through the sky at 2 Big Ones per second, GPRS will look like a sad joke. When GSM IPR is sold to Qualcomm at say 2% [a bit cheaper than CDMA since GSM is an outgoing technology of rapidly reducing value], you'll find there is a nice easy way for Vodafone to start overlaying their GSM networks without cutting off GSM customers, while giving them and upgrade path to the future [which will be HDR and cdma2000, not EDGE and VW40].

Do you think 2% royalty fee for GSM is cheap enough or should it be 1%? CDMA is apparently extorquerationate at 5% although it can handle 2 Big Ones per second, whereas GSM is a crusty old technology which can barely break 10 micro bits per second and does that inadequately. If ETSI and co seriously believe CDMA is expensive at 5%, it will be interesting to see at what price they sell GSM technology.

What a joke the whining about CDMA royalties is! Can those whining like a fleet of 747s seriously not understand how absurd their position is?

Maurice

PS: By the way, those numbers for CDMA, TDMA, GSM, Analog were spot on.

50m subscribers for CDMA now.
250m for GSM
etc...
CDMA growing to at least 20m handset sales a quarter during 2000. GSM doing little better than that. Maybe worse.

KZ Nerd, Tero means me [by 'the New Zealand effect']. He thinks I poison the well of sensible thinking with crazy ideas arising de novo from a deranged mind. He thinks exceptions about cruel and unusual punishment should be made for special cases involving the odd person.



To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3287)1/16/2000 9:14:00 PM
From: gdichaz  Respond to of 34857
 
tero: Comment? Chaz

Talk : Communications : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company

To: Kayaker (5274 )
From: Kayaker Sunday, Jan 16 2000 7:03PM ET
Reply # of 5292

12/22/1999 Conference Call - Selected Bytes - CDMA/GSM chips.

1999 Conference Call 12/22/1999 75 min.
Investor Conference Call Regarding The Sale Of Its Phone Business
Section 3: Question and Answer Session (68 min.)

Alex Cena with SSB.

Timemark: 22:50

Alex: For Irwin, I think one of your goals has been possibly obtaining some GSM IPR to expand your ASIC business beyond CDMAone. Could you expand a bit on how you intend to accomplish that goal? Thanks.

Timemark: 24:07

IJ: With regard to the GSM IPR, yes, I think looking forward, very desirable to be able to have chips manufactured that include both CDMA and GSM capabilities. There are some potential opportunities near term. There are potential opportunities further out certainly as one begins to look toward 3rd generation. As GSM operators then switch over to CDMA, but have to have initially islands of 3rd generation available, they would want to be able to fall back on GSM to fill in the areas around the islands. And so we've been talking with a variety of possible parties who have GSM capabilities, about possible strategic relationships. GSM, it's a little bit messy in that there are so many different parties claiming IPR and there's no one company you can do a deal with and be comfortable that they can give you that IPR protection. And so, the best thing is to work out some arrangements with someone that already has that and work out a strategic way of being able to make the parts. And so we're looking at a variety of those types of arrangements. There's another arrangement we're looking at that I'm not prepared to discuss further at this point but we'll see how that works out. If we can work through our strategic relationships, hopefully we'll find a good way of moving forward.



To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3287)1/16/2000 9:24:00 PM
From: gdichaz  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 34857
 
tero: Any interest in Linus's initiative?

Even though he seems to be an ex Scandinavian, assume there is still some interest in Scandinavia in his brainchildren. Or not?

Curious.

Nokia has already yawned officially, but unofficially?

Chaz

Talk : Communications : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company

To: Kayaker (5282 )
From: Ruffian Sunday, Jan 16 2000 7:32PM ET
Reply # of 5292

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Transmeta Corp., one of Silicon Valley's most secretive startup companies, is about
to come out of hiding this week with a new processor for mobile computing devices that sources said has a novel approach
to chip design.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, which has been as reclusive as author J.D. Salinger since the firm's founding four
years ago, will finally unwrap the mystery surrounding its much-anticipated Crusoe chip at a press conference on
Wednesday in Saratoga, Calif.

Semiconductor industry sources who asked not to be named said that the Crusoe chip represents a fundamental change in
the Internet-based world of computing. The sources, which include industry analysts, said that the Crusoe chip will initially
be aimed at notebook computers and Internet appliances, but it can ultimately be used in cell phones and other devices.

''It's a not-to-be missed event,'' said Mark Edelstone, a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst who follows the semiconductor
industry. ''The information that has leaked out suggests that they are working on some pretty interesting technology.''

The company was founded in 1995 by David Ditzel, who is well known in the semiconductor industry as a key architect of
Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (NasdaqNM:SUNW - news) SPARC processor family and as a former engineer at Bell
Laboratories. He has long been working on chips that use so-called reduced instruction set computing (RISC) technology,
which reduces the complexity of computer chips by using simpler instructions. Sun's SPARC is a RISC processor.

Transmeta is funded by some heavy-hitting investors, including Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) co-founder
Paul Allen, billionaire investor George Soros, venture capital firms Institutional Venture Partners, Integral Capital Partners,
Tudor Investments and others. Industry sources said that the company has received more than $100 million in several VC
rounds.

''Everything will be revealed on January 19 both at the product announcement and on the Web site,'' said Ditzel, adding that
he cannot comment on any of the rumors or speculation. Still in stealth mode, Ditzel will not even disclose the number of
employees at Transmeta, which one semiconductor industry executive said is close to 200.

But in the past two years, Transmeta gained even more buzz in Silicon Valley when it became known that Linus Torvalds,
the father of the upstart Linux operating system, had joined.



To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3287)1/17/2000 5:45:00 AM
From: Mika Kukkanen  Respond to of 34857
 
Just to add something to Tero's GPRS to WCDMA theory

Operators today ARE making the first steps in 3G by investing in GPRS. GPRS provides a subset of the full functions of UMTS.

Most suppliers have formulated GPRS technology to be seamlessly upgradeable to UMTS without the need for large infrastructure swap outs (mostly by software upgrades, certainly the case for Ericsson equipment). The biggest change is only in the air interface, something people forget is that GSM included the definition of the whole network and protocols (e.g., the fixed backbone network.). UMTS uses this to build upon. The main transition is to a packet based network, where data is sent in packets and voice is still circuit switched. This will eventually change as all operaotrs (fixed and mobile) will eventually go to a real-time IP based network.

There is only one company to my knowledge that offers products that operators are purchasing for today's 2G networks that supports the future 3G (I would be please to know if Nokia or anyone else is also selling this today and I understand this could get quite contentious).

I would argue that EDGE may not be the be all, it would only realistically be an alternative if an operator does not get a 2GHz license.

Also the idea that there is a large base of GSM customers compared to cdma is fine when talking about consumer products. However, when you sell to operators the difference becomes notably HUGE!

There is also an order of magnitude when comparing the interest of companies working with UMTS suppliers to provide services and applications compared to cdma2000. The reason? As stated above, the size of market (as stated above, infrastructure, applications and services are sold to operators and in most GSM markets geographical coverage is also well over 90%, as is population coverage, which means a lot of kit has been sold for even relatively small countries).

Gotta go now.

M