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To: jmac who wrote (89633)	12/8/2000 9:08:58 PM
From: Rick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

The December 9th - 15th, 2000 issue of The Economist, page "61" has a new 24 page technology quarterly. On page 16 there is a sidebar: "Two Stumbling Steps to 3G." "CDMA carriers, found mostly in America, South Korea, Australia, Japan and parts of China, will have the easiest time. Because the underlying CDMA signal is already packet-switched, moving to always-on data, albeit at just 14.4kbps, is as simple as a software upgrade. After that, carriers can get up to 153 kbps by moving to a standard called CDMA2000 with a hardware and software upgrade. That is about as far as existing networks and spectrum allocations can be taken. After that carriers need to build new networks using newly allocated 3G frequencies, which have more room for spectrum-hungry data services to grow. This is going to be even more messy. Again, existing CDMA carriers will have it the easiest: later versions of CDMA2000 can reach up to 2m bits per second (mbps) given enough spectrum. Most of Europe has already auctioned off the 3G spectrum at huge cost to the carriers, which plan to roll out their services using a standard called Universal Mobile Telephone System (UMTS). Theoretically, UMTS is also capable of 2 mbps - although in the real world, data rates will probably be less than that. But if the Japanese i-mode experience is any guide, consumers may be happy enough with GPRS and unwilling to pay much more for the promise of higher data rates. Such consumers content is a frightening prospect for carriers who had just paid so much in the hopes of serving greater demand." - Fred