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To: Dennis Roth who wrote (12039)	6/11/2000 8:34:00 PM
From: JohnG	Respond to of 13582

14.4 CDMA is better than nothing. Traveling the other day, after stopping for dinner, I hooked up my QCALCOMM 860 to the card in mu laptop and checked out SI and the market.Was it slow? Yes. Was it useable. Yes it was I am ready for 144K as soon as it gets here!! JohnG

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (12039)	6/11/2000 8:46:00 PM
From: recycled_electron	Respond to of 13582

Many factual errors in this article: IS-95 CDMA has also been enhanced to allow as many as eight channels to be aggregated together giving speeds of 64 kb/s and 115 kb/s (8 x 9.6 kb/s, 8 x 14.4 kb/s) in a circuit-switch mode. CDMA MDR (Medium Data Rate) services are completely packet switched!! However, should a high-speed data user be assigned eight code channels and transmit 100% of the time, the usage of spectrum is far higher than eight voice users. Another error - if there's no data to transmit on supplemental data channels, no frames are transmitted. Not even quarter rate frames. Data traffic is bursty - the duty cycle doesn't have to be 100% all the time. This problem is removed in cdma2000 because it includes the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol, which provides the ability to control when users can and cannot transmit. Until then, CDMA high data rates may affect the blocking rate to CDMA voice users. The MAC is not a solution to the "problem" the author thinks CDMA has. It exists for many other reasons. However, the point may be moot - most of the MAC has been taken out of the first rev of the cdma2000 standard. GPRS gives GSM operators the ability to provide data rates as high as 115 kb/s (8 x 14.4 kb/s). Yeah sure. Data rates is only half the picture. How does power control work on those phones? Will they over-heat, melt and wilt? Do you want to be even near someone using GPRS, leave alone use such a phone yourself? IMHO, these phones should be sold with high-radiation-hazard stickers ;) However, GPRS includes both the MAC protocol to enable several users to share the RF channel, and it allows time slots to be dynamically allocated to data users when not required to support voice calls. This is an implementation detail - not a point of comparison of how the two technologies work. CDMA supplemental walsh codes can very well be allocated to multiple mobile users - data only makes sense to the mobile user with right long code. GSM operators in Asia, Europe, and the United States are currently deploying GPRS, giving them a 12-to-18 month market lead in providing high speed packet data services. 64kbps (actual throughput!) data has been running in Japan and Korea since last year! 1x (153.6 kbps) data is due by the end of this year!! Again, probably first in Korea. . The i-mode service is similar to the WAP service and provides access to the WWW. Acutally they differ in many respects. WAP is also deployed in Japan - why is i-mode so successful then? May be i-mode content providers are so prolific, compared to WAP controlled content providers that applications are aplenty on i-mode compared to WAP. i-mode should be a classic case study of marketing prowess - "It is the applications, not the data rate, stupid!" :-) GPRS devices may also have an IP address . Anything that does data over a wireless channel has an IP address - question is, is the address "sticky"? True, mobile IP's coming soon for CDMA networks too. This, coupled with the fact that GPRS/EDGE represents a lower learning curve to deploy and operate in comparison with W-CDMA, means that GPRS/EDGE may therefore allow GSM operators to delay the deployment of W-CDMA. Hmmm.. delays in W-CDMA deployment a perceived virtue for GPRS/EDGE? If W-CDMA is to be the successor to GSM, this aspect of timeliness is actually disadvantageous. Therefore, GPRS and EDGE is set to become the dominant packet based technology in North America as well as around the world. LOL! The author implies that GSM is the dominant digital technology in the US and hence GPRS/EDGE has a chance here - quite on the contrary. The GSM alliance claims 5m (10/99) users in the US. CDG lists 16.5m (12/99) users in N.America (has some Canadian CDMA mobiles). Admittedly US carriers didn't move fast enough as DDI/IDO or KTF/Hansol/SKT to deploy IS-95B in the US in 1999, but they won't miss the boat again with 1x. Watch them try to make up for lost revenue with a vengeance :-) Ther are many other aspects of this article that are factually wrong - anyway, it was amusing to read and comment on the article. Regards, SRoy

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (12039)	6/11/2000 9:17:00 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 13582

Dennis, << the author in the article linked below thinks GPRS will beat everything. By ignoring 1X's time to market and having some confused ideas about CDMA she come to the conclusion that GPRS will beat W-CDMA and CDMA-2000 >> Confused ideas about CDMA is an understatement. The article is almost a commercial for CDMA if one unravels the confusion. Unfortunately she is correct in saying that GPRS will be a great commercial success. However, this following part interests me, but I am not technically astute enough to determine whether or not she is accurate in her statements about the different approaches to router based IP networks: >> To protect this investment in GPRS network technologies, the 3G proposal to transition GSM network to an all-IP based architecture builds on and extends the GPRS network standards. This is distinctly different from the proposal for the evolution of CDMA systems that has selected the Mobile IP standard as the foundation of their Wireless IP network solution. Although efforts are underway to attempt to harmonize between the two proposals, it is perhaps inevitable that there will be two different 3G IP network proposals just like there are two CDMA based proposals for the 3G radio interface, namely W-CDMA and CDMA2000. As GPRS becomes established around the world and GPRS infrastructure is incorporated into the GSM networks, its market dominance is likely to affect the ultimate acceptance of these two proposals. Therefore, independent of the relative merits of the respective architectures, the GRPS protocols are likely to usurp the Mobile IP/Wireless IP protocols as the dominant networking technology. << I'm wondering if anyone would care to comment on this. - Eric -

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (12039)	6/11/2000 10:16:00 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13582

Dennis, << the author in the article linked below thinks GPRS will beat everthing >> Yes. She claims a "Time to Market" advantage but does question How rapidly GPRS is deployed? When will handsets become available? I wonder if she has read this article? >> BT Delays Retail Launch Of GPRS Mobile Phones gprsworld.com By Anne Hyland GUARDIAN UK 02/06/2000 P29 British Telecommunications has delayed the retail introduction of its 'second-and-a-half generation' mobile telephones in order to capture higher retail sales over the Christmas period. BT Cellnet intends to launch its new telephones - which operate on the General Packet Radio Switch system, or GPRS - to business customers next month, claiming that there is pent-up demand from those higher value clients. GPRS is an upgrade of the present GSM system and uses network time only when there is information to be sent. It is designed to send data in 'bursts', and is ideal for applications such as email. It also enables a continuously open net connection for browsing. Retail customers, however, will have to wait until December to buy the telephones. BT claims the delay has been caused by the need to perfect its offering to retail clients, which includes fine tuning its content package. Vodafone has also pencilled its launch date for GPRS phones as 'later this year', and is unwilling to rule out Christmas as a possible date, though it promises to have its GPRS network operating by January. Orange chief executive Hans Snook has batted away the question by stating 'we will be introducing GPRS at least as early as anyone else'. One2One says it is aiming at the beginning of next year for its launch. Like some other operators, it says the standards set for the GPRS network and handsets are still being finalised and that it is foolish to rush into the market without those in place. However, some analysts argue the delay in GRPS's introduction is disadvantageous to customers who have already bought WAP-enabled mobile phones that provide a browser. Those WAP phones operate on the existing network which is slower and more expensive. Ovum new media consultant John Davison said the revenues on WAP phones for the mobile phone operators would certainly be higher on the existing net as users pay on a timed basis as well as for the initial connection. Using a GPRS phone, internet connections would be charged by the volume of data downloaded or sent. Mr Davison said the WAP phones available had drawn widespread criticism from users claiming they were inefficient. 'The GPRS and WAP launches have been horribly out of step,' he said. 'The combination of the two will deliver speed and functionality.' Mary Kirby, BT Cellnet commercial development manager, denied that there had been a deliberate delay in the retail launch: 'I would dispute that point. We will go into the market later, and by that time the mass market will be fully conversant with our high-speed data product. 'Our content provider services will then also be ready to meet the need of of the mass consumer market.' Another argument for GPRS phones is that operators will be able to find out what consumers want from Universal Mobile Telecommunications System phones when they are introduced in 2002. 'They have paid large sums of money for 3G licences,' Mr Davison said. 'By only playing with GPRS can they learn what consumers want.' << Maybe the first models will be "water cooled". - Eric -