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

To: Cooters who wrote (6785)	2/1/2001 9:14:09 AM
From: Ramsey Su	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196781

Cooters, a few other related items of interest: AWE subs increased by only 865K for the qtr and 2.5M for full year. Looks like Sprint is eating everyone's lunch, including VZ. PCS' ARPU for Dec qtr is at $60, fairly steady from $59 range last qtr. AWE's ARPU dropped from $71.50 previous atr to $66.10 Dec qtr. AWE expects wireless rev to grow at 30-35% for 2001. Assuming AWE's ARPU remains same, that means they need about 4.5M (at 30%) new subs to make this number. Per VZ's earnings release today, "more than half" their wireless subs are now on CDMA. I wonder what is "more than half". With 27.5 million subs, does that mean we have 13+ million non cdma subs there waiting to be switched? Ramsey

To: Cooters who wrote (6785)	2/1/2001 10:21:56 AM
From: William Hunt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196781

French telecoms regulator urges new UMTS round By Trevor Datson, Reuters 31 January 2001 French telecoms regulator ART said on Wednesday it had asked the government to open a new round of tendering for high-speed UMTS mobile network licences after only two groups tabled bids for four licences. ART President Jean-Michel Hubert confirmed to a news conference it had only received two bids in the first round, after Tuesday's withdrawal by construction-to-telecoms group Bouygues. By the 1100 GMT deadline bids had been submitted by France Telecom and Vodafone-backed Vivendi, which respectively own France's two biggest mobile operators Orange and SFR. Hubert said the call for a further tender round "would seem necessary to fulfil the objective of encouraging competition in the service of the consumer." However, the final decision on a fresh contest rests in the hands of the finance ministry. Finance minister Laurent Fabius may field questions on the UMTS fiasco in parliament later on Wednesday. Both France Telecom and Vivendi have made their acceptance of a licence conditional on any future licences not being awarded on more favourable terms, a stance Hubert said was fair. The ART president said the price for future licences "should maintain the fairness of the situation between the candidates selected in the current phase and those in the second phase." SUITORS HARD TO WOO BACK This, however, would be unlikely to attract new bidders or woo back phone operators such as Bouygues or Suez who have already pulled out on cost grounds. Both have said they could consider re-entering the contest on improved terms. Prompted by the delay in the award of the third and fourth licences, the telecoms watchdog said a European Union calendar stipulating the award of the licences by 2002 should be changed. "The timetable target of January 1, 2002 must be revised," Hubert said. The EU is unlikely to want to accede to such a demand, but neither will it want France to award only two national licences, on competition grounds. The timetable for evaluating the current bids would proceed as normal, Hubert said, which means a decision on allocating at least two of the four licences on offer will be reached by June. The French finance ministry, which the ART will advise of its opinion by end-May, did not commit itself to awarding all four licences by then. The contest, for which the state has demanded a 4.95 billion euro entry fee, was thrown into disarray last week when the Telefonica-backed fourth contestant Suez Lyonnaise quit. By then the Dutch group KPN, Hutchison Whampoa and Deutsche Telekom had already pulled out. The decision to withdraw made on Tuesday by the Bouygues Telecom consortium, which includes Telecom Italia and German utility E.ON, intensified doubts over France's ability to raise its projected 20 billion euros windfall from the contest. Failure would mean France becoming the fourth country in a row after Italy, Austria and Switzerland to suffer a shortfall in forecast UMTS revenue as bidders refuse to stump up hefty costs for nebulous returns. TWO OPTIONS JP Morgan analyst John Jensen said if the goverment pressed ahead now, it was bound to suffer a revenue shortfall. "I would imagine that if the prices were changed now they could only go down," he said, adding that the finance ministry had two options. "They could try to sell three or four licences now at a lower price, or they can keep the current price and sell two later, maybe even at the current price. Could they sell? I think they could. But it would take a change in the market and no-one's sure of that," he said. Either way, Jensen said, the UMTS rollout was not seriously under threat in the medium term. "France will have four licences when third-generation takes off with a vengeance. Not this year, but in two or three years' time." BEST WISHES BILL PS Interesting that 3G is getting too expensive