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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cooters who wrote (79824)	9/8/2000 5:56:04 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Speaking of Suzie..... claims to be a UMTS insider.... has lot's of opinions.... but I'm not sure she has it all figured out..... check this one out..... Author: suzieflame Number: of 16832 Subject: I'm a UMTS indiser who bought QCOM yesterday......... QCOM is a nice company, and probably cheap if you consider what UK and German network operators like Vodaphone, BT and Deutsche Telecom have paid to acquire licences to operate 3G CMDA networks - approx US$ 10,000,000,000 per licence. No, that is not a typo. Companies in the UK and Germany have literally bet billions of dollars/Euros on buying airtime for 3G, and they will easily double or triple that spend on network equipment. That's a huge cost base, and there's no question in my mind that incumbent GSM operators are going to migrate their customer bases away from GSM onto 3G UMTS pdq to recoup their investment. This is great for QCOM, as the company is a key 3G tech player, and each major country has about 4-6 networks begin built out, opening huge new markets for QCOM IPRs, chipsets and handsets. I can see multi-billion dollar profits for QCOM on the not-too-distant horizon, if all goes well. But I have one serious concern about QCOM:- it seems to me, as a 3G/UMTS system architect working for a very very large European telecoms systems player, that QCOM is well positioned in cdma2000, but not quite so well positioned in WCDMA, which IMHO will be THE standard selected by the major network operators (WCDMA is UTRA-FDD, DS-CDMA for the tech heads). Vodaphone have already selected this variant for their UK net (and I would guess they will do the same in Germany. And it looks like those operators now using Q's cdmaOne who may like to take the easy, in terms of cost and technology, upgrade path to Q's cdma2000 might be looking to switch to WCDMA for more global in-operability. See Korea for details. Ericsson is the smart money play in Europe right now, not Nokia, and ERICY has chosen WCDMA as it's core tech solution. Euro and worldwide GSM operators have no vested interest in buying cdma2000 because they currently have a complete different technology base in their GSM (TDMA) networks. They will go with the options being offered by the key tech partners, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens that allow them to build on their existing investment and also allow the existing interconnects (roaming agreements) to be maintained. And that means going with the standard that is chosen by the big boys, WCDMA. I know QCOM holds some key IPRs in all three technologies that could be used for FDD-UMTS. Also, I know that QCOM state they prefer ops to choose cdma2000, and that sample chipsets will be available for WCDMA in 2001. But I wonder, won't that be a little late? Infineon, for instance, already has a WCDMA chipset for sale that incorporates EDGE and GSM too. QCOM will attract some licence value from hat, but no as much as if equally competetitive in WCDMA. Opinions on that? I'd love to hear someone contradict me on the WCDMA thing. Suzie boards.fool.com