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To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3972)	4/5/2000 6:38:00 AM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 34857

And just when weird is no longer weird: an on-topic article regarding Euro mobile speeds (not the cars). Comments? "Hype from vendors like Nokia and operators like Orange says that European firms will get 2 Mbps speeds on mobile devices and connect anywhere at anytime--all by 2002," explains Lars Godell, analyst for Forrester Research B.V. "The reality is that gradual, uneven bandwidth upgrades will creep along through 2007 and only city areas will see 2 Mbps speeds by 2007." wirelessdesignonline.com

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3972)	4/5/2000 9:19:00 AM
From: Jim Lurgio	Respond to of 34857

Tero, Maybe you should give some thought about being a talk show host? Seem's whatever the arguement is, it comes to your front porch. Looks like another blood bath today with the SP futures down 22.90 at 10 minutes before the bell. Jim

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3972)	4/5/2000 3:05:00 PM
From: Allen	Respond to of 34857

I'm not in a mood for the normal spew, but... ... that they have genuine and serious concerns about the viability of cdma2000. They will rather pay more for W-CDMA than get stuck with a dud. There is more to the difference between CDMA2000 and W-CDMA than just how the bits are stuffed into the waves. The networking and signalling are different for CDMA2000 and W-CDMA. CDMA2000 signalling is derived from IS-95 which is derived from IS-54 which in turn is from the original (Ericsson dominated, I believe) analog signalling. This signalling, IMO, is rather sloppy, thrown together rather than thought out. Similarly, CDMA2000 networking is derived from the IS-41 standard developed in an equally sloppy way for IS-95 CDMA and IS-54/IS-136 TDMA. W-CDMA/UMTS is derived, I believe, from GSM for both signalling and networking. GSM is, again IMO, a much better thought out protocol. That is probably a factor in any decisions. They can't pick cdma2000 and risk interoperability problems with EU countries that have only W-CDMA networks. On the other hand - I believe just a few months ago Qualcomm and Ericsson introduced and got accepted into ETSI a proposal to lower the W-CDMA chip rate from the 6-whatever rate to a CDMA2000 compatible 4+-whatever rate to enable dual mode (CDMA2000/W-CDMA) phones. The hype, er, public statement said that they'd managed to achieve mostly the same advantages of the higher speed at the lower speed. I believe there has been a similar effort to make UMTS compatible with IS-41. One of the efforts has been to support both the IS-41 terminal identifier and the UMTS identifier in both protocols, which is unfortunate for UMTS, since the IS-41/CDMA2000 terminal identifier ain't so good. There are efforts to provide co-existence for CDMA2000 and W-CDMA. My fear is that they are dumbing down W-CDMA in the process.

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (3972)	4/6/2000 6:11:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 34857

Tero, the arcane details of W-CDMA and cdma2000 do have me bamboozled. I think you are right that the battle is largely one of trade protection and market share. The two modes are similar enough [in the most recent incarnation I've seen described] that they can sit on the same circuit board and maybe in the same ASIC. There would be an architecture and efficiency penalty [in the handset] and a higher price than a pure system. But those inefficiencies seem less a problem to the service providers than the importance of trying to carve out some product differentiation and protected markets. Even the gross differences between GSM and CDMA have not been enough to make a rapid transition to CDMA overlays [contrary to what I thought would have been underway by now - everything takes longer than I think it will]. So the relatively trivial differences between W-CDMA and cdma2000 don't seem likely to provide a rapid drive to a lingua franca. Some geographic, political and other normal sociological cultural identities make people want to retain some weird distinctions, simply to identify the in-group. Much like facial tattoos, expensive, painful, ugly, infection-risking make for group identity. I see the same tribalist forces at work here. But there are powerful OneWorld forces at work too. Plus ca change - this stuff seems to be a part of all of human history. Gangs, ingroups, trade barriers, Romeo and Juliet, Fiddler on the Roof and the like. Not to mention the young couple murdered on the bridge in Sarajevo for daring to romance across the ethnic/religious or whatever fantasy divide they breached. QUALCOMM does seem to be the champion ASIC designer at present. They have the best MSMs for CDMA. I don't see why they won't retain that lead for 3G since it is not far away. Nokia is an excellent handset maker and while ASIC design might be fun for them, their big money comes from sheer excellence in handset design and marketing. [Ericy has failed on Globalstar handsets by comparison - so even handset design earns big money!] Nokia could simply buy the ASICs and software from Q! and get on with cleaning up in the CDMA world. They'd make a LOT more money by being top dog with premium CDMA handset devices for voice and WWeb, with high margins. As they have done in the GSM business. Since Nokia has had such difficulty with 13kbps voice CDMA, I don't see how they can expect to come up trumps with W-CDMA or cdma2000 without buying Q! technology. Nor do I see anything wrong with doing that. NTT and DDI I suppose are negotiating with QUALCOMM and specifying W-CDMA would help keep pressure on Q! to compete to get cdma2000 accepted. On the other hand, they might simply be of the opinion that the legacy CDMA networks are relatively unimportant [which will be an increasing stretch of the imagination in 4 years, which is the earliest anyone seriously believe 3G in either W-CDMA or cdma2000 will be rolling out in any quantity - despite NTT's absurd claims that they'll be selling 3G next year - they obviously are ignoring the common meaning of the word '3G']. It would NOT be good to back the wrong horse on this one! If the world goes the W-CDMA way, cdma2000 would be a blind alley. If it goes cdma2000, W-CDMA would be even more of a blind alley - imagine naive GSM network buyers thinking they are getting a smoother upgrade path to 3G. Yes, I read the posts saying GSM underlying technology is 'better thought out' than CDMA which was allegedly based on rotten old analogue technology switching or something. As I say, the arcane art of wireless warfare is obscure to me at times. But I still think W-CDMA looks like a smokescreen to cover a mortally wounded GSM/TDMA battleship, which will be scuttled soon enough. Maurice