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To: 16yearcycle who wrote (82842)	10/10/2000 9:37:01 AM
From: S100	Respond to of 152472

I have the same question, no idea. Perhaps trying to get lower fees or to hide their plans for a while or just plain confusion. Lots of news from Korea and China in last few hours, hopefully all good.

To: 16yearcycle who wrote (82842)	10/10/2000 10:22:33 AM
From: Bux	Respond to of 152472

That's a good question actually. According to this mornings news, "Three carriers vying for lucrative licences to offer wireless multimedia capabilities have expressed a preference for a platform called W-CDMA, citing its 70 percent share of the world's mobile market." Of course this is wrong since we know that W-CDMA has a 0% share of the world's mobile market. We know that the Korean manufacturers have a lead in CDMA2000 technologies and they admit their preference for CDMA2000. I imagine the carriers want whatever has the lowest long-term cost per subscriber which would include initial equipment cost, on-going handset costs and the cost of operating the network. On every account I think there is sufficient evidence that points to lower cost for CDMA2000 so I was surprised when I first saw reports of a operator preference for W-CDMA, I don't buy the 70% figure. The only sense I can make of it is the Korean operators are doing the local manufacturers a favor (might even have some common ownership) by pretending to prefer W-CDMA to complete the FUD spread by GSM/WCDMA interests and further their lead in CDMA2000. In other words, maybe the Koreans are using the GSM propaganda to their advantage to maintain (or increase) their development lead in CDMA2000 by supporting the notion it will be a niche standard. Just a guess. Bux

To: 16yearcycle who wrote (82842)	10/10/2000 11:50:31 AM
From: Getch	Respond to of 152472

>>This is probably a dumb question but can anyone tell me why the Korean carriers are so pro W-cdma? I can't think of any sensible reason for their position.<< The only worldwide carrier making good cash flow from data right now is DoCoMo. They control the content, and handle all billing, taking their pound of flesh along the way. This has to be an appealing concept to a carrier, made more so by the prospect of large cash infusion by DoCoMo. The big question is whether the DoCoMo model will be transferable to any country that already has open, inexpensive access to the internet. There does not appear to be any technological reason for spending a great deal more cash to go W-CDMA, so the revenue generation of i-mode for the carrier is the only reason for actually pursuing W-CDMA. The other possibility is that it is just another version of DDI/IDO. Last summer DDI/IDO in Japan strung Qualcomm along until the last minute with talk of going W-CDMA, then at the last minute came running back. No reason was ever publicly given, but it was presumed that the W-CDMA dance was to extract concessions from Qualcomm. This may yet prove to be the case in Korea as well, because with the most recent delay we are still a month, at least, away from any actual decisions.