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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (36886)	12/21/2000 4:11:09 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 54805

Frank, <<I think there may have been some transcription errors or deletions in the first response >> Indeed. I am going to assume that [The forerunner to] in the response refers to cdma2000 1xMC (IS-2000A phase 0), just as Qualcomm and CDG USED to call 1xMC an "interim step" to 3G. << but what did you find bizarre with this? >. To the question: Q: In the competition for the third-generation system, you seem to favor CDMA2000 over wideband CDMA, the standard developed in Japan on the basis of Qualcomm's CDMA technology. Why is that? Dr. Jacobs replied: A: You have to ask which is earlier to market, has the best technology, and is cheaper to roll out. My answer is CDMA2000. [The forerunner to] CDMA2000 is already in operation in Korea, so it has gone to market a year earlier than wideband CDMA [which is scheduled to debut in Japan in May]. The question referred to "third-generation system"'s Qualcomm does not have a "third-generation system" in operation in Korea. I guess one could say they have a "forerunner to" a "third-generation system" in Korea. They have what the Korean carrier (SKT) and the rest of the world call a 2.5G system in operation in Korea, and that system went into commercial operation (commercial trial) in October, 5 months after its GSM equivalent (GPRS at BT Cellnet) did in the UK. CDG and Qualcomm have been hyping 1xMC as 3G ever since the ITU approved IS-2000A as an (interim) 3G standard. Thats kosher, I guess. What is installed in Korea is not, however, compliant even to the IS-2000A standard so now there is a bit of a stretch that matches up to DoCoMo's stretch for commercial launch of a 3G W-CDMA system in May 2001. DoCoMo's initial launch will not be compliant to the UMTS UTRA 'R99" standard, but they have been pretty candid about this since they announced their intention to launch W-CDMA in spring of 2001 back in late 1998 or early 1999. For the foreseeable future voice and packet data will be a lot of GPRS and a (very) little 1xMC, and it will be implemented in existing spectrum. The year time to market advantage that Dr. Jacobs talks about is in reality 9 months and the difference is that the system that will launch in Tokyo in May will essentially meet IMT-2000 requirements for 3G while 1xMC installed at SKT clearly does not. To the question: Q: But many operators appear to be veering to wideband CDMA. How do you explain this? Irwin replied: A: They've been told it's an evolution of GSM, but that's not right. They think it'll be out in 2001, but it may be later. Now that the license auctions are over, operators have to think what is the fastest way to move ahead. I think CDMA2000 is the better one. The GSM operators who made a decision in January 1998 to incorporate a wideband CDMA air interface into their third generation UMTS standard would chuckle at this. As for the auctions (for IMT-2000 3G spectrum) being over ... they are not. They will continue through 2001 (with a few stragglers like the US after that). The scorecard today for carriers (who obtained IMT-2000 spectrum as a result of auction) selecting cdma2000 as opposed to UMTS and have let contracts is, I believe, 23 to 0. Worse yet, 2 candidates for whom who we all thought the selection of cdma2000 was a no brainer just were awarded licenses for 3G spectrum and will build it out using UMTS. Irwin might think that cdma2000 is the "better one", but the carriers aren't buying it, and there are reasons for this. Shades of Steve Jobs. Truly bizarre. - Eric -