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Technology Stocks : Stratex Networks, Inc. (STXN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Luke who wrote (1172)	10/22/2000 12:16:03 PM
From: Rob Preuss	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1762

Luke, Not in five lines... and I'm not sure I entirely understand your question... but let me take a stab at it. CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) is one of the three approaches to "multiple access"... that is, means for multiple uses to share the airwaves at the same time. The other two approaches are TDMA (Time Division Muliple Access) and FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access). In TDMA, each user gets his own assigned time slice when he is allowed to transmit. In FDMA, each user gets his own assigned frequency band in which he is allowed to transmit. In CDMA, each user gets his own assigned "code" which he uses to transmit... although the various users transmit at the same time and in the same frequency band, they use different "codes" and this minimizes mutual interference. There are various pros and cons to these different multiple access technologes... and their use can be mixed in various ways as well... but in the end, they are all just different methods of slicing up the same pie. [One can also consider SDMA (Space Division Multiple Access) as a fourth approach whereby user transmit signals are geographically separated, either through clever beamforming techniques or simply by being in different well-separated locations, so that they don't interfere with one another.] Anyway, CDMA is popular for use in mobile phone networks and it appears it will supplant TDMA eventually. Mobile phone networks are one of the three major markets for STXN; see my transcript (Part 3) of the recent conference call in which Chuck Kissner reviews their major markets. In these networks, the user's voice signal must first be carried to a cell base station (using CDMA or TDMA or whatever)... then the signal must be carried from the cell base station to the central office. STXN's products are used for this latter "backhaul" purpose where they compete with land-lines... the advantages of wireless over land-lines include (1) faster network build-out, and (2) lower capital cost. The fact is, its terribly time-consuming and expensive to install land-lines. One must obtain rights-of-way, dealing with numerous local authorities, and then dig trenches or whatever to install land-lines... for wireless backhaul, you simply install a transmitter/receiver pair and turn the switch to "on". Of course, STXN's products also carry the voice (and, more recently, data) signals in the other direction, from the central office to the base station, as well. So as network operators expand their mobile networks, whether they use CDMA or TDMA or whatever, and as the capacity requirements of these networks grows (due to adding data transmission to voice transmission), their backhaul requirements grow and they rush out to buy STXN's high-capacity spectrally-efficient products to meet these growing needs. Hope that helps, Rob