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 Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 49thMIMOMander who wrote (99289)	5/16/2001 7:12:51 PM
From: S100	Respond to of 152472

GPRS and 3G by Neil McCartney Published: May 15 2001 10:02GMT \| Last Updated: May 16 2001 17:33GMT BT Cellnet, the UK operator, is due this week to launch what it claims is Britain's first consumer facility on general packet radio service (GPRS). For GPRS launch plans of Western European operators Click here For Western European timetable for awarding 3G licences Click here This is the intermediate technology designed to allow operators to provide higher-speed data transmission and a so-called always-on connection over their existing second-generation (2G) networks, which use the general system for mobiles (GSM) standard. The move is significant, because the consumer response to such services is expected to provide a crucial indicator of the likely level of demand for third-generation (3G) services, which in Europe and Japan will use wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA) technology. But it is likely to be some time before there is much evidence to go on, given the continued shortage of GPRS handsets. BT Cellnet, which launched its business GPRS service last June, and is now offering services at about 30 kilobits a second (roughly three times the speed of GSM), admits that it still has only about 500 users, divided between 35 corporate customers, including Cisco and Oracle. And there are some doubts about BT Cellnet's tariff structure, which involves charging consumers according to the volume of data they download, rather than the length of their calls. This is because GPRS (also known as 2.5G) is a packet-switched service which provides the user with a virtually permanent connection. BT Cellnet, along with most of the 30 or so European operators now offering GPRS services, (see table), already uses the volume-based charging approach for corporate users. It is offering consumers two tariff options. Under the first, users will pay £3.99 a month plus 2 pence for every kilobyte of data downloaded (roughly equal to one Wap page). Under the second, they will pay £7.99 a month for a package which includes 1 megabyte of data, with additional downloads charged at £3.99 per megabyte. But many experts argue that this approach is inappropriate for consumers because they will not normally know how much data needs to be downloaded in accessing particular applications. So they may be reluctant to make much use of the service for fear of running up unexpectedly large bills. Research suggests consumers would prefer to pay a flat fee for the whole service or for a standard package containing the most popular services. Meanwhile, Europe's 3G licensing process is set to start up again, after something of a lull since the Belgian auction fizzled out in March. The government of Ireland, Denmark, and Greece are all set to invite bids for licences by the start of next month and to make decisions in the third quarter. But in Luxembourg, bids will not be invited until September, and licences will not be awarded until December - only days before the expiry of the European Union's somewhat optimistic year-end deadline for the start of the services themselves. And in France, where two licences are due to be formally awarded at the end of this month to the only applicants which submitted bids in January, France Telecom's Orange and Vivendi's SFR, the contest for the remaining two licences will not be held until next spring, after the presidential and legislative elections. These delays have been accompanied by further postponements in the projected start dates for the first W-CDMA services. Last month NTT DoCoMo announced that it would not after all launch the world's first commercial W-CDMA service on May 30, and had instead delayed the launch date to October 1. The next day, the Spanish government said it had put back its deadline for the start of W-CDMA services from August 1 to June 2002. These moves have focused attention on the BT-owned Manx Telecom, which still says it will launch a service on the Isle of Man at the end of this month. But given that it will start with only a few hundred handsets, most of which will be distributed to selected users, it is debatable whether this service can really be called commercial.

To: 49thMIMOMander who wrote (99289)	5/16/2001 7:20:10 PM
From: S100	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Viewpoint: Third-generation phone services by Alan Cane Published: May 15 2001 11:06GMT \| Last Updated: May 15 2001 13:33GMT If it had not been for the extraordinary sums a number of companies decided they would risk to acquire third-generation licences, Europe's mobile phone operators could now be regarding the future with equanimity. It would not have mattered much that, because of technological delays and difficulties, the launch of third-generation services on a commercial scale now seems unlikely before 2003 or 2004. The operators would have been comforted by the conviction that it is inevitable that 3G will be a success; the continued growth of conventional 2G services would have ensured adequate cash flow and return on investment until the new services were up and running. As it is, any delay may threaten the very survival of some of their number because of the cost of servicing huge levels of debt without the ability to tap into revenues from the new applications. It is hard to see what, if anything, can be done about their plight. No government could seek to change the rules of the auctions under which the licences were distributed without running foul of the law. So forget about handing the money back or re-running the auctions. There may be ways of saving costs such as site-sharing which could lighten the load. Licence holders may be able to make a return on their investment by opening their networks to mobile virtual network operators, companies able to run their own branded services and, via their own billing systems, manage the relationship with their customers. The news last month that NTT DoCoMo, the largest and most aggressive of the Japanese operators, has been forced to postpone the introduction, set for this month, of 3G services until later in the year, will also have set spines shivering. DoCoMo, after all, has been working on its version of 3G technology with its suppliers for some years and its task is inherently simpler than that facing the European operators. DoCoMo's handsets need to operate only in Japan's 3G technology - W-CDMA or wideband code division multiple access. For the foreseeable future, European operators will have to provide dual mode handsets combining today's 2G technology, GSM, with the European version of wCDMA, UMTS. It seems that DoCoMo's difficulties are to do with "hand-off" - the way in which the signal is passed between base stations as the subscriber moves between radio cells. W-CDMA technology dictates that hand-off is controlled by the handset; in the US version of CDMA, the base station is given this responsibility. The former approach places substantial power demands on the handset. An increased number of dropped or lost calls is a possibility. DoCoMo is quite properly not prepared to risk launching a full commercial service until these problems have been licked. Experts are convinced that it will make W-CDMA work but that it will take longer than expected. This seems to be the heart of the matter. Technologists in the US, Europe and Japan have consistently under-estimated the difficulty of developing, from scratch, a new technology such as CDMA. Radio technologies are complex: making them work often resembles a black art rather than a science. Tests needed At the moment, while the infrastructure for Europe's 3G networks seems well advanced, dual mode handsets have yet to be completed and tested - not only to ensure they work but will work with other manufacturers' networks. It raises the question whether other versions of 3G technology can be implemented more rapidly and economically. The US company Qualcomm, which holds many of the basic CDMA patents, has been developing the technology for the best part of a decade and is mounting a powerful campaign to convince operators that it has the solution: "The bottom line is that 3G is real, here and now, with CDMA2000" is the claim of the CDMA Development Group, an industry lobby. Qualcomm is now capable of supplying the intellectual property for CDMA2000-1X, a version which can provide data rates of up to 144,000 bits a second and is continuing with the development of the faster CDMA2000-3X. Nevertheless, while it may turn out a close run thing, CDMA2000 is unlikely, in the end to supplant UMTS. UMTS was designed as an evolutionary step from GSM. There are upwards of 500m GSM subscribers worldwide. By comparison, there were only some 80m CDMA subscribers at the end of last year. The conclusion must be that market forces alone will ensure that UMTS will in time become the 3G world standard. But it will take significantly longer than originally envisaged and the effect of those huge 3G licence payments on the industry will be significant. Look, for example, at British Telecommunications' predicament. Operators are hoping that GPRS, a mobile data technology based on GSM and described as 2.5G, will bridge the gap, providing experience of data services and a welcome income stream. They may be successful; otherwise there will be question marks over who will eventually inherit the UMTS mantle.