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To: slacker711 who wrote (12695)	6/17/2001 3:32:38 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

Slacker, re: EDGE v. 1xEV-DO status << link ... to the KDDI testing.... >> Thanks for the link. I have several others (some darned place) and if I find a few that I consider worthwhile, I'll post. << I am curious where you get your bullishness on EDGE >> Please do not construe "curiosity" or "interest" with "bullishness". Qualcomm remains my largest portfolio hold so I am hardly bullish on EDGE (or GPRS). GPRS is an obstacle (a BIG obstacle) to work through on the path to WCDMA (and royalty flow to Qualcomm), and now we have GSM-EDGE as another obstacle to add to TDMA-EDGE (which I hope becomes stillborn). I follow technologies that compete with the cdma2000 family, as they relate to my investment in Qualcomm (and of late my smaller Nokia investment). << With the exception of AT&T, I have seen very little operator support for EDGE. Almost nothing in the way of timetables .... >> AWS keeps things a tad quieter than Qualcomm and CDG. I really think AWS took the UWCC by surprise when they moved beyond the "consideration" stage, announced their technology flip, and almost immediately contracts with vendors. You may have heard me relate this story before. In August 99, I was cruising the Chesapeake with a former customer and friend, who at the time was involved in several standards AGs. We were talking about GPRS and he calmly proceeded to tell me about AWS having made the decision several months prior (and committing their best engineering talent) to skip GPRS and go straight to EGPRS (TDMA-EDGE). I literally almost fell off the darned boat. This decision was by no means public knowledge, wasn't even rumored, and Lynette Luna had not yet published her famous RCR News article with the catchy title that implied that AT&T was seriously considering 1xRTT. It was several months or more, before they publicly announced their TDMA-EDGE migration path, which has subsequently changed. The point of my story is that although you have to look hard for AWS EDGE timetables, and nothing has been published about EDGE field trials, I do not think we can assume that they are not taking place. As for "with the exception of AT&T, ... very little operator support for EDGE", you are correct. The battle is shaping up between an TDMA-EDGE choice v. a GSM-EDGE choice v. a 1x choice. AWS will be looking to convince other members of the UWCC to follow their lead. They need this to create economies of scale. BTW: one of the more interesting and informative publications on EDGE is the Northstream "White Paper on the Role of EDGE Technology". Carranza supplied a link here, but that is another one I do not have a link handy for. - Eric -