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To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (7499)	10/10/2000 6:53:01 PM
From: Caxton Rhodes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

GPRS shunned by handset manufacturers. Mobile & Satellite Handset vendors are stifling GPRS, says GSM firebrand By Ray Le Maistre, Total Telecom, in Montreux 10 October 2000 The roll-out of GPRS services is being held up by the reluctance of the handset vendors to give enough manufacturing capacity to GPRS handsets, according to delegates at the GSM Association's 44th Plenary meeting in Montreux, Switzerland. "The vendors have known the technical specifications for GPRS for two years, but they haven't gotten up off their asses and delivered. They could have done if they had really wanted to," thundered George Schmitt, now chairman of Herndon, Virginia-based e.spire Communications, an integrated communications solutions provider, but previously president of U.S. GSM operator Omnipoint. "The handset manufacturers have been a great disappointment to us, including some of those vendors that also make the infrastructure," said Schmitt, a former president of the GSM Association and still an executive committee member. He said the main problem for mobile operators was that the manufacturers' production facilities are working at full capacity making handsets to meet current demands for 2G voice networks, "and we can't force them to produce one product over another," admitted Schmitt.