Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Getch who wrote (9006)	3/24/2001 12:29:42 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197214

Getch, << Thanks for the clarification on the channels, but could you explain in more detail the "official" spectrum? >> Here is a chart of the original WRC IMT-2000 (1885-2025 MHz and 2110-2200 MHz Core Band) of spectrum: itu.int China and Korea allocation is similar to what is shown for Japan The additional bands identified in June for the terrestrial component of IMT-2000 are: 806-960 MHz, 1710-1885 MHz and 2500-2690 MHz. The core band is a total of 155 to 175 MHz and many countries want to see a minimum of 35 MHz per carrier within that band for 3G initially and movement towards the full 155 to 175 MHz eventually (in that band or elsewhere) by 2005. You will notice in the table that USA PCS-1900 falls into the originally identified spectrum (and now the 800 MHz band does as well). There are several issues with the USA however. Spectrum licenses are chopped up geographically (by some 450+ Basic Trading Areas) and by frequency chunks of 5MHz, 10MHz, 15MHz, 30 MHz) and no carrier can have more than 45MHz in any BTA (capped spectrum). There are no "national" licenses in the USA. If we ever awarded a "national" license with no spectrum cap ... look out ... the prices paid for national licenses of pretty big chunks of spectrum in Germany, UK, and Italy, would look pretty paltry. What AWS paid for just an additional 15MHZ in the NYC MTA and what Verizon paid for same in 5 major markets are an example. ... so we have 45 MHz max, nobody has that across the board, few carriers have a national footprint and the spectrum is not contiguous, and little falls into the original core band where initial "official" 3G will be built out by some 100+ networks (including KDDI in Japan). Now again, all this chopped up inconsistent mess in The USA, makes cdma2000, unquestionably the best available technology to use for delivering 3G services and "official" be damned. Two issues here. are the interoperability one, and the somewhat related voice and data roaming one. Cooperation between 3GPP & 3GPP2, multi-mode, multiband chipsets, using ZIF (from QUALCOMM and others) will eventually help alleviate this, as do common standards for SIM, USIM, UIM, and R-UIM, and further down the road there is SDR (or so they say). This is the "Holy Grail" referred to by Nancy Gohring in her much discussed (here) article called "Isolationism?": "handsets that can operate on any of those networks and switch from one to the other - without the user knowing - based on such criteria as price, signal strength and service offering" BTW: I'm wondering why no one here used the "Talkback" feature available on ZDnet to comment on the "Isolationism?" article. I enjoyed some of the posts in response to the article. I happened to think it was a pretty good article. The headline caught attention as did the first sentence, and that encouraged people to read on and get into some of the real issues of spectrum and of 3G WANs and LANS and issues of interoperability. The ultimate issue is how much spectrum is sufficient spectrum. In our voice-centric world several carriers have more than enough for today, and MAYBE the rest of the decade, bit we are not yet shoving lots and lots of data up a relatively small pipe. << Could you give an example of how and when Sprint will officially meet the 3G requirements? >> When they issue handsets with an R-UIM that operate in 800/900/1800/1900/MHz & 2GHz spectrum (or at least some of the above in addition to 1900 MHz cdmaOne/cdma2000) for starters. <g> I think "officially" and "requirements" are to some degree are a bit of a red herring, but issues of spectrum (over the long haul), of interoperability, and voice and data roaming, of standards, and technology, are real ones. Sprint PCS is interesting. In many respects they have done more to foster the adoption of wireless data than any other carrier. Still they are somewhat "isolated". They have a great national footprint in 1900 MHz, a state of the art network becoming more state of the art and continuously expanding to address their coverage issues. On the other hand, Sprint PCS is not as spectrum rich as either Verizon or AWS. Sprint PCS has yet to implement two-way SMS as Verizon and AWS have done, and have done little yet to foster worldwide roaming for their high APRU business customers (or casual vacationers) like AWS has been doing since 1995 and Verizon will no doubt shortly do (and hopefully won't have to wait for a QUALCOMM chip to do so although I look forward to the day when i can travel with a device or devices with an MMM6somethingorother inside. ... in the interim Verizon and AWS just spent some big bucks to secure additional spectrum in major markets. Depending on the outcome of NextWave they may not ever get to use it and will remain at a rather meager 30 MHz in major markets. That is a lot by todays standards, but not by 2010 standards if wireless data is as successful as it should be by that time, irrespective of whether W-CDMA, 1xRTT/1xEV-DO, 1xEV-DV, or XXX-CDMA is employed. Bottom line "true" or "official" or "required" 3G, is about voice and data communications, any time, any place, anywhere. Someday ... - Eric -