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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 (6423)	1/23/2001 2:08:54 PM
From: tradeyourstocks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197051

Is Dr. V still on the Qualcomm board? I thought I read something recently that he's no longer on the board. MicroE

To: foundation who wrote (6423)	1/23/2001 3:03:16 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197051

"Q has no apparent involvement in OFDM" Given that Viterbi is on the board, I would expect Q to invest in OFDM if the technology appears to be useful and/or complementary, or even competitive with CDMA. My point is that worries about OFDM at this point seem unfounded. In fact, if Flarion really has something valuable, it could become the next SnapTrack. Art

To: foundation who wrote (6423)	1/23/2001 3:39:24 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197051

* OFDM and Flarion * flarion.com Well, here we go again. Somebody here asked Andrew Viterbi a couple of years ago about OFDM and QUALCOMM and he more or less grunted with an impression that QUALCOMM wasn't involved and it wasn't a big deal. Now we know why. OFDM is obviously a very big deal. Firstly, it is not voice, it is for data. Andrew Viterbi has always emphasized that data and voice should be separated. He has separated them so totally that he has left the voice department. However, voice and data DO go together where it matters most and that's in customer's heads. So both have to be delivered to subscribers. I suppose there will initially be 3G services, with all-CDMA, then, when OFDM is ready, there will be a voice ASIC and a data ASIC in the same device. I suppose they can be combined and QUALCOMM would seek a licence to use OFDM. So it looks as though by 2010, QUALCOMM will be the voice king and data will be spread over various systems and companies. I think the cost of data will be so low that the price of data won't be the critical feature of data delivery. 3D and other features might be more important. Then again, spectrum will be cluttered so that alone could cause significant price competition. Notice how in Noo Yawk, spectrum bids are higher [per person] than in Europe where it was claimed that prices were absurd and going to ruin the bidders. It seems that the bidders in Noo Yawk don't believe that! Here are Flarion's market research comments: <Market research expects and users demand flat rate pricing models for wireless data services similar to the popular one-rate plans on the voice side. Initially this leads to an attractive business model for service providers where they generate disproportionately more revenue from the data services than those services consume resources in comparison to the revenue generated from voice services and the resources required to provide those voice services. Unfortunately the popular flat rate pricing models cap the revenue growth related to the data services while the underlying traffic growth is increasingly explosive. This leads to a situation where service providers will generate a smaller portion of their revenue from data services than the portion of resources they have to allocate to support those services. This is the point where the initially high-margin wireless data business turns into a low margin business. All this happens in an environment where spectrum, the most valuable resource, is limited and wireless networks don't scale well enough to support the overall traffic volume efficiently. Now service providers are faced with a situation where they have to decide which user they will allocate resources to, and in most businesses the users that generate the highest margins will get the majority of resources allocated to them. In effect that would suppress the mass-market adoption of wireless data. The below graph shows the wireless service provider revenue share trends for voice and data services over the next 5 years:> This is silly. Market 'research' like this means nothing. Of course people prefer flat-rate pricing because that has been the cheapest way of getting internet access. Actually, what people really want is service which is always available when they want it and cheaper than any other service. The absurd idea of cutting some customers off is nuts. People on el-cheapo price plans are expected to get no service when the richies are in town. Yes, you guessed it, the answer is Wacky Wireless, so that everyone can CHOOSE whether they want service or not and NOBODY gets cut off. Sometimes, the El-Cheapo people won't mind paying $10 a minute [when their boat is sinking or their car is on fire or they just really, really want to make a call right now for some personal reason] so it's stupid to refuse them service. Arun's schoolmate is good at maths, but bad at understanding what people want. He should work out an algorithm to drive the base stations and leave it to the subscribers to decide what they want and whether they'll pay. All the maths in the world can't decide for somebody what they want at any given instant. I have never heard anything linking QUALCOMM and OFDM. Motorola has got patents using price to control circuit availability in feedback loops [from 1993] in cellular systems. Maybe QUALCOMM could get patents on noise control in CDMA systems using price feedback loops. That's the key to wireless success when the competition gets going. Cutting people off dead or refusing connection will NOT be the way to get customers [even if they have got a stupid 'flat rate' plan]. The suppliers who supply minutes at all times will be the ones who get the customers and make the money. Mqurice

To: foundation who wrote (6423)	1/23/2001 4:31:32 PM
From: Jim Fleming	Respond to of 197051

RE Qcom and OFDM A couple of years ago on a CC Viterbi was asked about Q's research on OFDM. He brushed of the question with the statement "We might have a couple of patents". Jim