Ben,
<< In light of reports from Matsushita, do you care to hazard a guess as to when "day one" might be? >>
Yes. My guess is end of May 2001, as has been scheduled for some time.
If DoCoMo plans to slip the date then worst case we have less than 90 days to hear their announcement of a postponement.
Three quotes from, and my comments relative to, quotes in the link you published:
"NTT DoCoMo said there are several handset makers working on 3G phones, but analysts said MCI would ordinarily be one of the few firms capable of rolling out products on time."
You might expect that Samsung would have been (one of) the logical initial handsets for the Korean 1xRTT "launch" in October. To the best of my knowledge they did not provide handsets initially, SK Teletek did. Samsung announced 1x handsets almost 2 months after the "launch" I don't find this unusual at that stage of this type of "launch", and DoCoMo's" "launch" will be similar. Whether they will have the 4 model types they plan on is an up in the air question, as is whether or not they launch with less than the 4.
Mamoru Takagi, an analyst at Societe Generale Securities, said not only might MCI miss the 3G launch, but added: "Even if MCI launches 3G phones on time, I'm not so bullish about demand."
Here go the analysts again. DoCoMo has several public comments on record that they will severely limit subscribers at early stages, because of limited infra, limited handsets, and most importantly that they will be in debugging stage. Infra and handsets will be limited because what the "launch" with is not what they will build out, and they will limit what they have to replace.
"He noted DoCoMo's own projections of a modest 150,000 subscribers to 3G in its first year".
DoCoMo has never stated 150,000 subscribers in it's 1st year, nor have they stated it will take to 2004 like Rich Sulpizio indicated could happen.
<< opportunity to sample Q's 5400MSM >>
What, pray tell me, is an MSM5400?
<< Quite true. But 1xevdo should have IMT-2000 certification by November (with production chipsets soon). >>
By production chipsets I am assuming you mean the MSM4500 chip which is due to sample soon ... or maybe is sampling?
BTW: Sulpizio's slide 16 (chip roadmap) has some wording after "HDR only" on the MSM4500 that has not appeared elsewhere. Can you make it out? I can not. I thought at first it might say "trial", but am now, not so sure.
The original MSM4500 release 11/99 says this chip will be MSM3100 based. I am wondering if this will ever be a real production chip or whether there might be a "4105" or whether the MSM5500 will be the real production chip.
I am guessing here, but I my guess is that some changes will take place, as a result of an OHG "massage", between the TIA/EIA/IS-856 standard as it was published in November and what is published and accepted by ITU for IMT-2000, and this will dictate another chip, or require that requisite changes are incorporated in the MSM5500.
<< And although standardization precedes commercialization, wCDMA's lead in standardization will, by all appearances, not lead to faster commercialization or deployment - due to inherent technologic complications with wCDMA..... barring SpinCo's prospective contributions. >>
There certainly are technology barriers to overcome relative to W-CDMA. It appears there are similar ones for cdma2000 as well. The 307 kbps rate has evidently contributed to the push out of the MSM5100 and IS-2000 Release B, and the "data speeds with peak rates up to 614 KBPS " still referenced on the CDG web site.
So far as I can tell their is nothing yet being commercialized for cdma2000 operating in 2GHz, and I expect that KDDI will be the first implementation of that, and so far as I know the target for that is still fall of 2002, roughly year after their 800 MHz 1xRTT projected launch. I am assuming they will continue to reverse "receive & transmit" but that makes interoperability with cdma2000 implementations a little tricky, and limits applicability elsewhere.
If the MSM5200 will speed things up for commercialized W-CDMA systems for 2G HZ, that is great. This chip certainly has application in Korea and Japan.
Certainly, given timetables we are seeing for W-CDMA (Asia) deployment, they are not overly late to the game, and I suppose the "Multi-mode" chip (or chips) could employ ZIF, and could make an impact on "Europe". This of course critical to the overall success of SpinCo, in terms of market expansion. I think I heard Rich say that ZIF was about 9 months out.
<< And by all appearances, 3GPP is farther from completion of UTRAN Evolution than 3GPP2 is with 1xEV-DV - as inferred by the correspondence I receive almost daily from associated working groups. >>
I'm not exactly sure what the significance of that is, near term. I'm under the impression that this is a feasibility item for Release 4. I promise I'll go back and search up and reread your posts on SPA <g>, however, and appreciate your tracking on it.
I do take 3GPP timetables rather literally. Two years from published standard to commercial delivery. W-CDMA needs to get over the 'R99' hurdle before it implements R99 or R99 enhancements.
<< I must have missed this - I'd appreciate if you'd share the URL to this release... >>
No link was published in the single post referencing this on "Moderated Qualcomm" Decembers and I've seen only one reference to this in a print newsletter out of Phillips (not in my possession) also December. Those are the only 2 references I've seen of any sort on typical user rates or gated user rates for 1xRTT at SKT other than Rich stating that they were :very good".
<< Certainly timely considering Assistants's problems. Care to speculate how long it will be until NTT announces a formal delay for their WCDMA program >>
No. I'll let DoCoMo do that. There are plenty of my fellow Qualcomm that spend their days so speculating. They don't need me to add more.
Not speculating on Vodafone/Verizon or Unicom either.
Both Vodafone and Unicom remain, IMO, the best potential champions of cdma2000, HDR, that could lead to commercialization of cdma2000 in some form that could be applied to an existing GSM world. There are major interoperability challenges, though, but at some time these need to be faced. As you know, I am of a mind that multi-mode handsets only take you so far, in providing requisite interoperability.
I will say that I don't give a lot of credence to Robert Saunders, (Eastern Management Group) speculation quoted by Malclom Spicer (a seemingly objective industry observer, and good source of current wireless events) that Verizon will consider W-CDMA. It's not out of the question now that Verizon has accumulated (pending NextWave decisions) 45 MHz of spectrum in NYC, LA, Chicago, and Philadelphia. I think it's a stretch however. I hope so. I was a little disappointed after listening to Verizon's webcast to learn they didn't have much budgeted for 1x this year.
<< or is the sample group so small, cloistered and controlled that proceeding without handsets is a possibility? <g> >>
What, like SKT? <g>
I'll be a little scarce for awhile. I look forward to reading your posts when I catch up.
- Eric - |
