Eric, the fact is, that China using, importing, wCDMA technology is antithetical to their expressed desire for indigenous research, development, and manufacturing capabilities. wCDMA would be a step backward for China's interests.
Ben, the fact is that China's been attempting to develop a local wireless manufacturing base via GSM for quite a while. Their attempts to do the same via CDMA are nothing new. The problem is that no matter what you try to do, you can only convince carriers to buy a limited amount of inferior Chinese-developed infrastructure equipment rather than turn to superior products from Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel, etc.; and you can't convince consumers to buy inferior, Chinese-made handsets, when they can buy superior models from the likes of Nokia, Siemens, and Motorola. That's why China hasn't been successful at developing a local manufacturing base so far. To an extent, they've been learning the harsh realities of a free market.
Now, what makes you think that aside from a few infrastructure-related contracts that the government will shove down Unicom's throat, that the Chinese will have any more success with CDMA? To say that the competition offered by the CDMA handset/networking offerings of Samsung, Nortel, Motorola, etc. isn't anywhere as strong as the competition offered by the GSM vendors in their particular field doesn't seem like a convincing argument, and I think that you'd be the last of all people to make it. The Chinese decided to adopt CDMA partly to quell political pressure they were getting from the American government, and partly to take another shot at becoming a major exporter of wireless goods a la South Korea, or at the very least, produce a greater % of the wireless-related products sold within their country. They succeeded with the former; I doubt that they'll have too much more success with the latter.
You've yet to offer, in response to my thesis, one viable reason why China would prefer wCDMA. You lastly suggested that the reason was that wCDMA would more easily upgrade GSM legacy systems - to which I accurately responded that the 1x EV-DV specification (incorporating LAS-CDMA) is both ANSI-41 and GSM Map compliant - making it an equally appropriate candidate for GSM upgrades. (Recall - this is, in part, China's Standard - and as such it is being designed with China's requirements in mind.)
We've been over this before (http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=14643637). Yes, the 3GPP2 specs being developed do allow for a GSM-MAP upgrade...but at the expense of direct roaming support with those using other CDMA networks. If a visitor from Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan, utilizing a cdma2000 handset, makes a trip to China, and China Mobile's done an MC-MAP upgrade, he can forget about any roaming possibilities unless his phone also is programmed to support the GSM protocol stack, which most likely won't be the case (consider how most European GSM users tend not to buy phones with GSM-1900 support). And no, SIM card support isn't quite the same. Just ask the South Koreans.
Considering that the per-capita-income of the average China Mobile subscriber is relatively low, things like roaming have to factor more into their plans. Even if we were to assume that, should China Mobile opt for cdma2000, the South Koreans would go likewise, the roaming opportunities for a cdma2000 network are still significantly lower right off the bat, and adopting a specialized version of cdma2000 that prevents roaming via standard handsets would make the situation even worse.
As I said earlier, with the South Koreans currently wishing to abandon 3x, getting Unicom to throw its entire weight behind a cdma2000 rollout in new spectrum, in and of itself, could be more than worth an IPR-related concession; and in this situation, things would work themselves out well, as Unicom would already have a major IS/95 network in place.
And, yes, Eric, I find glee in NTT's pathetic confession. From dismal GPRS handset failures - to wCDMA's distorted press and retreating expectations ...
I'm sorry to hear that. Like I said, blasphemy could result from following dogma too strictly. "Confession" is probably the wrong term to use, as well. It's more an issue of the economic realities related to attempting to build an entire network, air interface and core, from scratch*, something that the Europeans won't have to deal with**. I admit that between the delays, the radiation articles, and the ever-dwindling data rates, GPRS is quickly turning into a joke, but that's another story. Personally, I'm hoping like hell for huge W-CDMA rollouts to start across the board by late 2002/early 2003; but if you aren't, that's just fine. After all, who cares about Qualcomm's profitability when there's a holy war to be fought?
Eric
* See wirelessreview.com
The earlier trials were based on NTT DoCoMo’s specification of W-CDMA, and its announced plans to migrate to the 3GPP-defined UMTS specification.
Also, if I remember Qualcomm's last CC correctly, it was stated that DoCoMo was using the UMTS-UTRA specifications, albeit the '99 version of them.
** engineer, as I was saying, I think DoCoMo's intentionally trying to be excessively conservative in their estimates. They're fully aware of all the hype that they've generated, hype which will be impossible to fulfill come next spring/summer, and so they're trying to make things sound as bleak as possible. JMHO. |
