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To: Rono who wrote (355)	10/28/2000 12:57:18 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1691

I recall three or four years ago when Nextel was rolling out voice service, some CDMA pundits claimed Nextel would never compete successfully with the supposed PCS voice capacity advantage. If my memory is correct, claims were made of 40x(?) analog capacity, which would clearly put Nextel at an extraordinary disadvantage. Obviously this hasn't happened, and now much of the focus is steered toward the CDMA data advantage. Time will tell whether this comes to fruition, or quietly pass in the same manner that voice has. Sorry....I should have read through your posts to see that you have been investing in wireless for a while. I have always found the 40x capacity advantage to be a canard. This seems to have been the upper-bounds of the theoretical advantage sited when CDMA was on paper in 1989. I think it has become generally accepted that in practice, CDMA can provide somewhere between 6-10x the capacity of analog. I think the evidence of this is in PCS's spectrum usage. Every analyst report I have read discussing this has stated that PCS has used 10MHz or less of spectrum in most markets (they have upto 30MHz). This is with a customer base approaching 10m. OTOH....Nextel has made it clear that they plan on being aggresive in the upcoming spectrum auctions due to their current constraints. I am not as familiar with Nextel as I am with the other TDMA operators....I should be asking you the questions. What type of internet services have been enabled with Nextel's packet based network? Also, how competitive are Nextel's rates? From the various articles after Nextel's earnings it sounded like Nextel wasnt going to attempt to compete on the low-end of the consumer market. Slacker