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To: Eric L who wrote (28235)	7/18/2000 7:13:45 AM
From: foundation	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Eric - You ignore interesting recent Asian wCDMA developments. 1) NTT's "agreements" with Korean telecoms came at a price - backward compatibility with Korea's latency systems (soon to be 1x). SK Telecom made this clear. 2) ERICY, working with NTT on the May 2001 rollout, suggests 1x can be the upgrade path to either wCDMA or CDMA 2000. Asian wCDMA, in light of strategic and Asia-specific political concerns, is clearly becoming different than Euro-virgin-wCDMA. Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan will define, and redefine as required and pleases them, what wCDMA becomes. Europe, being last, looses significance in the equation. Europe can only watch. And, in the end, follow. It is a particularly European mindset that assumes that after standards are completed, and authorized by the "bureauocracy", that standards will not change. And this may well be true within the confines of socialist Europe. But Europe cannot "call the game on account of rain" for 2(?) years while they get their technology in order. Europe can only control their part of the gameboard, and continue to bar competing standards in Europe, including non-virgin forms of wCDMA. They can hold out the "carrot" of participation in Europe's handset market to the Samsung's and the prospect of roaming to Asian telecoms. But how will Asia respond? Samsung has a stellar lead in CDMA handset technology. Will Samsung believe that NOK and ERICY will allow Asian handset makers a generous portion of European sales on an alternate standard, at some point in the future? With prospects for roaming between standards imminent, will the telecoms care? Asia clearly has the opportunity to take the wCDMA "ball". And little reason to resist. Europe is in the process of losing control of "the standard". Euro bureaucrats have no leverage outside Europe, which must puzzle and infuriate them. Euro-virgin-wCDMA is dying as I write. regards, blg

To: Eric L who wrote (28235)	7/18/2000 8:38:23 AM
From: gdichaz	Respond to of 54805

Eric L: Thanks for the Archy and Mehitabel link. The breadth and depth of your knowledge continues to amaze me. On "standards" you are the expert. You and your people have manyears ("personyears") in sunk costs sitting through multiple meetings and following up on all that has been happening. Yes. In thinking about my incredulity about what you were saying, I realize that you were talking about the European controlled standards bodies (which exclude CDMA and Qualcomm participation), and unclear to me at least the ITU standards bodies where Qualcomm is the supplicant. As is often the case, we come at this from very different views. You see Europe as the "controller", I see the action as Asian centered - marketplace oriented. I do not question that Europe will fight tooth and nail at every opportunity to keep any future CDMA technology from being approved in Europe itself. What is interesting to me and I appreciate your wisdom on this is the extent to which non approval in Europe destroys the opportunity for the use of a technology such as HDR (or 1xEV) in the rest of the world - specifically Asia? Do the Europeans have absolute control of the ITU standards process? Trying to learn. Best as always. Cha2