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To: carranza2 who wrote (12920)	6/21/2001 1:22:44 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

re: Telstra << You got your guy, I've got mine, but mine is an Euro, too >> Please, not another cool move of the year Irwin lunch with FT, as Grahame would say: In February 2001, Jacobs ventured into enemy territory - a GSM congress in Cannes, France - and predicted that W-CDMA deployments would be delayed by two years, providing an advantage for Qualcomm’s own technology. Markets were unimpressed, wiping 20% off Qualcomm’s value for Jacobs’ act of talking down the market. Despairing investors would have preferred him to have kept his mouth shut. Grahame Lynch, btw, is an Australian. Speaking of Australia, the article below is about Telstra's CDMA net. One of the more interesting decisions yet to be made for IMT-2000 3G spectrum already licensed, is the one Telstra will make. My initial thought is they would go CDMA ... but I'm not so sure ... and they ain't telling ... but Qualcomm's investment in Aussie spectrum might be for a reason. >> Australia Cdma2000 Network mobilecomms-technology.com Telstra is currently carrying out trials for high-speed data transmission across its new Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network. The CDMA network, which was installed by Nortel Networks in a contract worth $300 million, was launched commercially in mid-1999. As the new network was completed subscribers were moved across from the older analogue AMPS network, which was switched off in stages. The AMPS service closed in the five major capital cities and in 130 non-metropolitan sites on 31st December 1999, leaving a further 270 sites which will remain open until 30th June 2000 or 31st December 2000 as the new CDMA network is rolled out. No new base station sites were needed for the new service. All antennas for the service have been located on existing AMPS or GSM sites. There were major concerns in Australia over whether CDMA would be an adequate replacement for the AMPS service, which covered 93% of the population. Concerns centred on whether those in remote areas would be able to receive signals, considering that the range of a CDMA base station is far less than that of an AMPS station. Once the network is fully shut down in December 2000, this will be known. Software is available that allows the range of a CDMA station to be increased from around 55km to 150km. The Network The Telstra CDMA network is primarily aimed at the voice market, and it hopes to switch all its analogue subscribers over without losing any to rival GSM operators. However, it was constructed with data traffic in mind for the future, and trials of Nortel Networks' cdma2000 1XRTT high-speed data technology were started in mid-2000. The trials include verification of data throughput speed, voice capacity increase, coverage impacts and potential applications in a live network configuration. The trial includes testing and verification of high-speed data, data applications including web browsing, mCommerce (mobile commerce) and enhanced voice capacity. The 1XRTT specification for high-speed data transmission is 144 kbps (kilobits per second). Based on Nortel Networks' CDMA Metro Cell base stations, and 1XRTT voice and data terminals from Samsung, the world's leading supplier of CDMA terminals, the trial is also intended to demonstrate the smooth evolution from existing Nortel Networks' radio infrastructure to third generation (3G) networks. cdma2000 cdma2000 is the 3G solution based on the IS-95 standard for CDMA networks. It is both an air interface and a core network solution for delivering high-bandwidth services, especially those with bursty data profiles like the Internet. It was developed in the US by the Operators Harmonisation Group and will prove seamless global roaming with the other 3G standards, especially W-CDMA (Wide-band Code Division Multiple Access), under the IMT-2000 standards and frequencies. << - Eric -

To: carranza2 who wrote (12920)	6/21/2001 1:47:00 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 34857

carranza2 << Everyone forgets that Sprint had GSM in DC, and dumped it >> Not me. Yes, they sure had DC/Baltimore customers confused trying to figure out what was Sprint Spectrum and what was Sprint PCS after CDMA FINALLY showed up. You do know the reason Sprint PCS (WirelessCo) chose CDMA do you not. It sure was NOT a technology decision. The word begins with an F and ends with a g. Can you spell V E N D O R F I N A N C I N G ? [Most fortuitous for Qualcomm and us shareholders] ... and as for "dumped it" (now VoiceStream) ... You also know why after acquiring controlling interest in American Personal Communications (APC which became APC Sprint Spectrum in October 1995), Sprint continued to buildout GSM (using dual cabinet base stations so they could later swap in CDMA) ... The reason was that CDMA was late to market ... despite all of Qualcomm's and CDG's hype about how GSM-1900 would not be ready for PCS launches, but they would be, and they didn't show up for the party till 10 months later. I was, ironically, last evening, wearing a tee shirt from the Sprint Spectrum November 1995 Launch Party, where Jimmy Buffett entertained grandly, and Motorola, and Ericsson, picked up the tab. Twas a grand time. So was the launch itself. Data services and OTA provisioning day one. Flawless (well almost) day one. Three years later CDMA did data ... ... someday they'll do International Roaming. - Eric -

To: carranza2 who wrote (12920)	6/24/2001 11:33:51 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 34857

re: Grahame Lynch on Gilder, Hyperbole, AWS, EDGE, et al Vintage Lynch ... knowing how much you like this Australian's prose >> Wireless Watch On Being Gildered Grahame Lynch June 1, 2000 Telecom Investor telecominvestormag.com The financial community was misled when a pundit forgot the difference between an air interface and a standard New-technology seer George Gilder is known for his endorsements of companies he believes are disrupting the telecom market for the better. It’s not often that he devotes his prose to outright denigration. So Wall Street Journal readers were surprised on May 1 when they found that a main article by Gilder and a co-author trashed AT&T Wireless’ use of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) as its network platform. Perhaps Gilder’s tendency to hyperbole means that when he releases the bile, it comes on really thick and heavy. He described AT&T Wireless as a "low-tech wasteland," adding that TDMA was "essentially worthless." He added that TDMA’s evolutionary path to the 384 kbps EDGE standard was nothing more than a "bit of current vaporware" and that its data speed was "paltry" compared to the CDMA higher data rate standard which he claims can support speeds "six times as fast." Gilder recommended that AT&T should trash its TDMA network in favor of CDMA and even inferred that failure to adopt his course of action could leave the entire US economy behind the rest of the world. Whew! Too Emotional Over CDMA Gilder is not the first person to get emotional over CDMA or to infer that use of TDMA is tantamount to treason. But he needs to get his facts straight before taking on AT&T Wireless. Virtually all the promised data-centric abilities of cellular are, indeed, vaporware. EDGE isn’t scheduled to be released until 2001; according to the CDMA Development Group, the CDMA 1X upgrade supporting speeds of 144 kbps (half that of EDGE) won’t be out until the end of this year. The fastest CDMA speeds to date range up to 64 kbps, mainly in Japan. They have competition from first-generation PHS services which have been offering these sorts of speeds for two years now. The first W-CDMA platforms (an evolutionary path for TDMA and GSM networks) may support speeds in excess of 384 kbps, but they won’t be available until next year at the earliest. Right now in Japan, the bulk of wireless Internet use, from a real market of over 5 million people, takes place on the PDC platform, which supports speeds of just 9.6 kbps. Speed, like size, isn’t everything. Gilder’s contends that TDMA has a capacity disadvantage against CDMA. This is true if you take the air interface in isolation. But the sheer dominance of TDMA-interface operators across the world (GSM uses TDM access) is placing vendors under pressure to develop a range of optimization solutions, such as half-duplex algorithms, micro- and picocells, and frequency-reuse ratios that have trended down from seven cells to four. Providing high data rates and considerably higher capacity on any standard requires more base stations. It is not a cheap or easy process. With TDMA-based operators globally accounting for over eight times the subscriber numbers of CDMA-based operators, there’s bound to be successful technical and business models that provide cheaper alternatives to complete network trashing. Gilder forgets that there is a big difference between an air interface and a standard. CDMA is a superior air interface to TDMA, but cdmaOne is not a superior standard to GSM. This is why the TDMA fraternity is frantically attempting to converge its back-end systems with GSM, which has the lead when it comes to roaming tables and databases, messaging protocols, billing procedures and subscriber identity modules. These standards enable GSM operators to earn lots of margin-heavy extra cash. It’s no coincidence that CDMA pitches itself as the discount service alternative to GSM in markets where the two co-exist. It’s also no coincidence that the cdmaOne alliance is working hard to develop interoperability with GSM standards, given that cdmaOne operators are largely denied access to the $12 billion international roaming market as a result of their original failure to create an effective numbering plan. Day-Traders Were Ill-Informed AT&T Wireless would be mad to trash its TDMA network. It increased revenues by 40% last year and is on track for another 30% this year. Most PCS competitors are still loss-makers. A packet-based protocol, CDPD, exists for TDMA and can be implemented on-demand. There’s no reason to regard further data upgrades such as EDGE as any more lacking in credibility than other proposed 2.5G or 3G models. What’s more, the successes of NTT iMode in Japan and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) in Europe show that ISDN or DSL-style data rates aren’t a pre-condition for the future success of wireless Internet services. Gilder’s views wouldn’t matter so much if they were confined to his 20,000-subscriber newsletter. But he chose to air them on the leading page of the largest circulating newspaper in the US. Internet message boards frequented by day-traders lit up within hours with passionate, yet ill-informed, responses. The misinformation was blinding. Gilder should exercise his cursor - if you pardon the homonym - in a more balanced way. << - Eric -

To: carranza2 who wrote (12920)	6/24/2001 11:38:31 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

re: Grahame Lynch on CDG's 10th and a Perry La Forge Interview Another vintage piece showing the softer side of Grahame Lynch & Perry La Forge - just to show Grahame isn't ALL one sided. As CDMA Turns 10, CDMA Development Group Executive Director Perry La Forge Reflects on Success, Failure and the Road Ahead. Grahame did a somewhat kinder celebration of CDG's 10th anniversary than Wireless Week who brought up CDG's reputation to "over promise and under deliver". >>Fighting the CDMAcause, v.2001 Grahame Lynch Americas Network December 1, 2000 The next twelve months will see a major effort by CDMA vendors to influence the third generation path for cdmaOne operators. Central to this contest is the CDMA Development Group, which is driving the development of the so-called IXEV standard for 3G networks. One goal - to convince TDMA and GSM operators to marry the new 3G CDMA interface to their existing IS-41 or GSM MAP networks. But first the CDG has to resist the European W-CDMA push and crack the elusive China market. In this interview with group editorial director Grahame Lynch, the executive director of the Orange County, CA-based CDMA Development Group, Perry La Forge, outlines the issues. "I don’t have any delusions that deployment will happen fast in Europe." GL: Currently, the major CDMA vendors are coming out with proprietary 3G proposals for cdmaOne networks. What is the process for harmonizing these into one standard? PL: Part of what we do is to work from a requirement side and then provide input into the processes that actually define a standard. We used that for 1X and 1XEV phase one. Right now, 1XEV phase one is being balloted. The next step is 1XEV phase two. Just see them as progressive releases. We’ve put a timeline on October 2001 for 1XEV phase two, but some of the manufacturers are going to want to better it. GL: A number of vendors say they can push the 1XEV phase two speeds beyond five megabits per second, which is way beyond what anyone specified. Where will it end? PL: Well, we have a pretty strong basis now and the goal is to leverage off that basis. I think you’ll see greater things but at some point it will flatten out. There will be new technologies that improve it. We’ll have enough bandwidth in terms of the radio air interface that we’ll start to focus a bit more on the user interface, simplified interaction with the phone, and maybe concentrating a bit more on HTML and leveraging the Internet. There’ll be less focus on the radio interface. GL: What about the idea that everything will work on an IP platform? That will be a big deal. You’ll see a lot more talk about the core network and the move toward IP. I don’t think many people have that resolved yet. They don’t know how to bill for packet. They don’t know how to manage packet. So it’s going to take some time. There’s been some good news for CDMA deployments in China in the past few weeks, but there’s been less reporting on the deployment announcements in Vietnam and Thailand. Do you see these breakthroughs as a good sign for CDMA in other mid-size developing economies? We’ve always done pretty well in Southeast Asia and we’ve done very well in the whole Asia Pacific area, including Australia and New Zealand. In many of these countries, deployment has been more of a financial issue than a technology issue. You should see some continuing progress there. GL: In China, Unicom has said they will deploy CDMA but they have yet to issue RFPs. PL: "Relatively speaking, you’d be surprised at what little government help we had." They’re about ready to launch RFPs. There’s been some preliminary RFPs, so they’ve got something to work off. There was a delay, and I think that’s been resolved. GL: What do you think of the current talk about TD-SCDMA and the potential for China to develop its own standard? Will that impact on the deployment of cdmaOne and CDMA2000? PL: I don’t think so. We’ve been working on them with different things and I don’t think it’s in a position to delay us. China Unicom is pretty bullish on moving forward and they have wanted to launch for some time. They’ve now picked up the four Great Wall networks and they’ve got something to build out. Will TD-SCDMA have an influence in the future? Time will tell. GL: With the launch of CDMA IS95-B in South Korea, what’s been the early feedback in terms of technical performance? PL: To be honest, I haven’t really followed IS95-B that closely. We are more focused on 1X. 95-B is a transition step for some folks. The feedback has been pretty good in terms of talking to my Korean colleagues. I was personally never a big proponent of 95-B in that it took a long time to get through the standards processes and it was so close on the heels of 1XRTT that it didn’t make sense. For some people it did make sense because they were being pushed for data services. GL: One of the big selling points for CDMA 1X is that you can put it on the GSM MAP, which creates new potential markets. Are you aware of any interest in this from Europe or Asia? PL: There is interest. I’m not naïve in the sense that I have any delusions that it will happen fast in Europe. There’s a real strong emphasis there for W-CDMA over the new spectrum. Whether you believe me or not, W-CDMA was almost set up as a policy initiative. There is still a lagging feeling that this is something that needed to be done. As time goes on and people get settled with spectrum and understand the technologies, there will be some opportunities for us. NMT-450 could move that forward [to CDMA]. That’s a real opportunity, and there are some small operators who would like to that, but again, there is resistance at various levels to that happening. Our focus is full-speed ahead in areas where we have access. We’ve taken that approach with TDMA operators. A good example is Bellsouth [which operates TDMA in the US]. They’re using CDMA in Latin America. We’re not the best geo-political organization in the world, but as things shake out we’ll look for opportunities. GL: Much of the current industry focus seems to be on high-speed data, but many CDMA operators such as Leap Wireless are focusing on voice. CDMA has also been very popular for WiLL applications. What’s the future there? PL: Wireless local loop hasn’t taken off as fast as I thought it would, and that’s mainly because it’s a very complex area in terms of regulatory reforms. I do maintain that it’s a big opportunity in places like Latin America and India. It’s very politically charged, because if you’re using a mobile technology in a fixed environment, the fixed people wonder if they can compete. There’s a conflict. It will roll out but it won’t be a big driver in terms of numbers. But it will grow, especially as you see things like Bluetooth, where people may want to connect in a wide area network. GL: In the last couple of years the CDMA cause has been extended a helping hand from the US government. With the election, how will that change? PL: I claim we had very little of a helping hand. You didn’t get help in Asia? Hey what? Relatively speaking, you’d be surprised at what little help we had. I know it’s popular opinion to think that we’ve had this huge administration support in Europe, but we have an issue that whenever they do anything for CDMA, you’ve got TDMA right on our tails. In Asia we had a little bit of help, particularly in China. That’s been thwarted by the fact that they can’t come out behind a particular technology because it would disadvantage another technology such as TDMA. One thing we haven’t done well is enlisting the support of governments. On the European side, there were some letters written with [US Secretary of State] Madeline Albright, but nothing really happened. GL: With a new set of faces in the administration, might things change? PL: I doubt it. It’s a very sticky geo-political issue. There might be some support, but by and large, there is a view in support of a free market. I just wish Europe would have a free market. It’s a difference of policies and I’m fine with that as long as everyone recognizes it. It’s a fundamental difference of views. << - Eric -