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Technology Stocks : George Gilder - Forbes ASAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: k_maxwell who wrote (4828)	9/9/2000 12:03:11 AM
From: Kent Rattey	Respond to of 5853

S-CDMA is not QCOM related technology.

To: k_maxwell who wrote (4828)	9/9/2000 1:06:37 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5853

Thanks, KM. Your assumptions are correct. It's apparent that I did not make myself as clear as I should have. You noted: "I thought Gilder liked TERN because it uses CDMA, not because it has anything to do with fiber optics." Correct, I agree with that, because: "Qualcomm/CDMA has been a major theme with Gilder for years," True, although you may have understated the matter. Although as Kent Rattey has already pointed out, S-CDMA employed by TERN is not Qualcomm's CDMA. "... and although there are tangents to the fibersphere paradigm, I think he sees CDMA as a separate paradigm." I don't know about that one. Maybe so. The term "paradigm" IMHO gets severely overdone at times. Don't paradigms ever commingle into an harmonious whole? Given that CDMA also exists on some optical multiplexer vendors' wares, I find it difficult to make the same distinction. They are not too popular yet, maybe they will never be. Forsooth. But at least one manufacturer of optical muxes for the metro actually employs CDMA as a primary undercarriage for information transport, and in their price point range they claim to be very cost effective and maneuverable alternatives to standard NRZ-based SONET systems. Maybe someone else can expand on this point. Ray, you out there? Re: my original point, however, let me elaborate somewhat. I meant to state that the primary area in which TERN delivers CDMA-based improvements is in extending the life of a 1950 technology which is intractable, its utterly un-networkable, and totally obstinate to the advancements of FTTx. This, at a time when we are perched on the cusp of fiber-to-the-neighborhood/-curb/-home, TERN stands to extend the very life of the plant that stands in optical's way. Plant that has its roots some fifty years ago, and continues to be installed by legacy-entrapped operators, right up to the present. As I noted earlier, there is nothing IMO inherently wrong with what TERN is doing. It's improved immunity to noisy, rusty, bnc-connectorized coax actually benefits the cash-strapped operator who doesn't want to, or who cannot come up with the capital to, upgrade their plant to hybrid fiber/coax at this time. But once the HFC is eventually installed, especially if the HFC is outfitted with state-of-the-art WDM-based optics at the fiber end nodes, then the CDMA issue becomes relatively moot, although they may still continue to use it at that time. And it is inevitable that they will upgrade to HFC if they are to continue to compete and offer a full range of two-way services over STB-supported service suites. So, through the use of their CDMA approach they ... "... [squeeze] more information through black coaxial's return path.." I don't regard this quality as being necessarily ascendant, as much as I regard it as a retrofit, or a temporary expedient. But it has its place, nonetheless. FAC