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To: foundation who wrote (38555)	1/28/2001 6:02:52 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 54805

Ben, << Wonderful questions! ... GPRS handset delays affecting CDMA takeup>> Hey ... nice response. Thanks for putting the thought into it. I've been putting down thoughts of my own ... but just random stuff. I'm off to the SuperBowl tube, but be assured, I'll be back at you. - Eric -

To: foundation who wrote (38555)	1/29/2001 10:20:30 AM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Ben, re: QCOM - Can they capitalize on 2.5G GPRS delays << reported GPRS handset delays >> I really appreciated your well thought out response. In the interim, a few thoughts of my own. For starters, it is unfortunate that the GSM 2.5G migration path does not utilize a narrowband CDMA interface, but that is water over the dam to some degree, and I won't belabor it. Cross modal specifications for GSM/1xRTT simply were developed late in the game (but this could play a future role). GPRS handsets are "officially" late. Whether or not the carriers were overly optimistic or not, and I believe some of them were, they anticipated functional first phase 2+1 GPRS handsets in some reasonable quantities for the Christmas season, which meant that at least a dozen of the carriers who were commercially live would have received functioning preproduction handsets in September at the very latest to do integration testing of new networks. Presumably many of them already have limited quantities of the Motorola p7389i and the RIM Blackberry's and are in controlled testing. To make matters worse, a number of reports are circulating that technical problems associated with GPRS terminals, may not be overcome in the immediate future and that next Christmas season may still not see reasonable quantities of terminals stocked in retail outlets. Time will tell. There are perhaps 10 GPRS models terminals from 6 manufacturers slated for release in the next 6 months with probably more unannounced waiting in the wings. At this stage, it is unlikely that they will be in volume production. There may be some exaggeration of the technical challenges facing GPRS handsets. A lot of the reports are from carriers, who may just be venting publicly, because they can't get firm commitments from vendors. The bad press of Sonera has probably made vendors very gun shy. If there are reasonable quantities of terminals stocked in retail outlets next December, all is much ado about nothing. If not, it is another story and it seems that QUALCOMM might be able to capitalize on it, which is why I posed my questions to you. There is a flip side to this, and that is that delay in GPRS could delay W-CDMA take up. When Andrew Seybold plugged in on his November update to his "Wireless Roadmap" general deployment of GPRS at 19.2/9.6 kbps commencing late Q4 2000 and of GPRS at 38.4/9.6 kbps commencing late Q4 2001. He could be as much as 12 months off, but that remains to be seen. Certainly the initial date is in error. He was working off best available data when he updated. If he is off on GPRS he could be off on IMT-2000 (at 364 kbps - peak) W-CDMA in Europe where he projects limited deployment commencing Q2 2002 and general deployment there commencing Q3 2003. He is projecting "3GDS" general deployment in Asia beginning Q3 2002, 3 months ahead of cdma2000 EV in Asia. I cite Seybold here, because he is about as objective and well informed a source as the industry is going to find, in an industry that has hyped technology to hell and gone, and has been victimized and penalized by that hype. So far, cdam2000, has seemed to stay pretty much on target, although even as conservative as I have been, 9 months ago I would have projected twice the volume of 1x shipments in Qualcomm's current fiscal as were recently projected, and I would have anticipated that the shipments would have been on the MSM3300 base, rather than the prior generation chipset base. I'm not sure that really matters if QUALCOMM stays on target with the revised dates of the MSM5100, because the 1x carriers that follow are likely to roll out relatively cleanly. GPRS delay has to be a CDMA advantage. SKT was a great partner to choose for initial 1x deployment. They are proceeding slowly, in controlled fashion while they upgrade infrastructure, and keeping fanfare and hype to a minimum, and by the time they roll in volume they should be a showcase for 1x. There will be no comparable GPRS showcase. BT Cellnet (who supposedly has infra installed nationwide in the UK) will most likely be still waiting for commercial volumes of handsets, although they too have done a fine job as early adopter of GPRS, readying and refining services, and controlling their small corporate user base. Most certainly, GPRS has lost the first to market advantage for 2.5G (as the Koreans call 1x) and when comparisons are made, CDMA should look pretty darned good. I'm not a speed freak at this stage of the game, but regardless of how optimization affects GPRS at 38.4/9.6 kbps (putting GPRS theoretically into the ISDN effective throughput arena) ... optimized 1xRTT at 307/? kbps peak data rates that we should see this time next year ought to be pretty impressive. I won't get hung up on HDR, yet. That's another chapter Hopefully all this can be exploited to QIUALCOMM's advantage, at least by keeping W-CDMA on track ... maybe accelerating it. Still handset issues to solve. Issues with GPRS handsets will be exaggerated with W-CDMA handsets, and Dr. Jacobs is right on that one. The real win, would of course be CDMA overlays of GSM in existing spectrum. China still the best bet, IMO, for initial commercialization of this. I'm not taking this to the bank, but the Korean 2.5G experience, could have a very positive rub off on China. - Eric -