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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: foundation who wrote (4536)	11/14/2000 10:40:34 AM
From: Caxton Rhodes	Respond to of 197634

Sprint PCS follows Qwest with voice portal test By Total Telecom staff 13 November 2000 Sprint's wireless arm PCS will announce today the beginning of trials with Santa Clara, California-based BeVocal to test a voice portal service. Although no commercial deals have been signed yet, Sprint PCS is expected to roll out national voice portal technology in the United States early next year. BeVocal's technology allows consumers, and increasingly, business users to browse the Web for information using a mobile phone and natural vocal commands rather than a browser and PC. Qwest Communications became the first carrier to bring voice portal technology to market when it bought software from BeVocal on 30 October. Qwest services started 1 November, and are free of charge initially.

To: foundation who wrote (4536)	11/14/2000 11:36:26 AM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 197634

Re: Sprint PCS network upgrades and plans for 3G rollout << Though Verizon may lag, I'm hopeful that Sprint will follow KDDI's lead with aggressive 1x data pricing next year... Sprint will also benefit from an extra year's evolution in high speed applications. >> Next Year? Perhaps. Best they upgrade their network, do integration testing and debugging, first, eh? Pricing? That will be interesting. The $64,000,000 question in the US. Target customers for initial rollout ... clasicaslly it should be the corporate user, eh. Verizon (my carrier) probably will lag a tad. I am a little nervous about Craig Farrill's departure and the Verizon task of combining 3 nets and replacing analog is still in progress. As a high APRU mobile voice and data wireless user, I attempt to set realistic expectations (sort of like I do for investing in wireless) about availability and cost effectivity of services. I am not exactly sure, however, what data rates at what price, or when, will be available to me as a "mobile-residential" customer, or my corpration as a business user. Apologies in advance for quoting this 3 week old article below if it has already been posted here (but a quick search didn't find it). If you have any clearer picture of Sprint's roll out plans for 1x I would like to see them. Excerpts only are included below. I have removed references to the results of the Sprint PCS, Samsung, Qualcomm and 3Com field tests of the cdma2000 1x field trials, to focus on Sprint's network upgrade plans which are pretty exciting, and represent a considerable investment: 3G Field Trial Bears Burden Of Proof October 30, 2000 issue of Wireless Week Deborah Méndez-Wilson wirelessweek.com <snip> Sprint PCS plans to roll out 3G upgrades throughout its nationwide network starting in the second half of 2001. Phase I promises to speed up the carrier’s data offering by tenfold, boosting data rates from 14.4 kilobits per second to 144 kbps. But Sprint PCS estimates that phase I hardware and software upgrades, to be completed by early 2002, will cost an estimated $800 million. Those upgrades include new channel cards for existing radios, installation of packet data serving nodes at switch centers and new software on both cell sites and switches. Ira Brodsky, president of Datacomm Research Co., says the long-term benefits of building a backbone that can handle ever-faster data speeds justifies the investment Sprint PCS is making and should give pause to other data providers. "They are designing it so it will already be able to support more traffic at higher speeds, not just the first phase of cdma2000," he says. "So it’s clearly an investment into the future." Brodsky says likely challenges in overlaying the network, which essentially amounts to a separate Internet protocol data network over Sprint PCS’ voice network, include ensuring that back offices are not overstressed. Sprint PCS’ long-term plan is to migrate gradually to 4G by 2005, eventually reaching data rates between 3 and 5 megabits per second. Starting with phase I implementation, however, consumers will notice immediate gains in speed that the company hopes will fuel demand for more advanced wireless data services, says Oliver Valente, Sprint PCS chief technology officer. << - Eric -

To: foundation who wrote (4536)	11/15/2000 1:01:00 PM
From: JGoren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197634

Got a Samsung 3500 handset (which is now out of production); there were no ThinPhones available. This is the first time I have had a phone other than a Qualcomm. While the Samsung interface has some advantages over the Qualcomm user interface, the speaker in the phone stinks. All the Qualcomm phones I have used sound much, much better. The Samsung sounds tinny and is often difficult to understand the person with whom I am speaking. I will buy a Kyo-Qcom handset as soon as 1x and GPS are available, since I assume KYO is using the same speaker supplier. BTW, Sprint had none of the new KYO-Qcom phones on display; the customer service person said they just hadn't had the time to put them out, yet. I only noticed that they even had them in Dallas when another customer was buying one and I saw it. Looks really neat with the translucent blue plastic. I will say Voice Recognition is a nice feature.