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

To: straight life who wrote (14519)	9/1/2001 1:06:51 PM
From: foundation	Respond to of 196562

..If DoCoMo rolls out shoddy services.." ---------- NTT is in a very tight spot. It's share price is tanking. It's had to delay spinning and listing DoCoMo on foreign exchanges. It's had to write off foreign investments. SK appears less and less interested in a technology marriage. Europe's GPRS networks aren't ready for i-Mode. And FOMA "disappoints users in trial" where "Poor battery life, reception problems and lack of content make cellphones 'next to useless'.." ---------- NTT has no good choices. If it delays, far more than face will be lost. If it launches commercial service - even to a paltry 150K subscribers - how can it spin performance that is clearly sub-par? Has a miracle transpired in the last 2 weeks? "..According to a DoCoMo survey, 47 percent of the trial group believe FOMA's connection quality is poor, while 53 percent said disruptions under the service are more frequent than with conventional mobile phones.." And this is with its network taxed with a mere 4K users.... and it sounds like many of those left their FOMA handsets in the drawer. "..The service... will be offered in Tokyo's 23 wards as well as parts of Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures within 30km of central Tokyo.." "..Engineers at NTT DoCoMo are desperately working to improve connectivity and hope to establish 71 more antenna bases by Oct. 1. There are currently 214.." So... will 33% more base stations do the trick? If the engineers' desperation pays off, there will be 285 base stations for Tokyo and a few suburbs less than 30km from the city. All of this, of course, in order to reduce the chip rate of the asynchronous search window that is 5 - to well over 12 times - the size of the search window for synchronous operation. How many base stations will it require to blanket all of Japan? How will Europe's less docile population take to the realities of base station density that is the price for asynchronous obsession? "..The battery life issue is also a formidable hurdle. While in call-waiting mode, FOMA cellphones must be recharged after just one day... Since FOMA handsets use more electricity than conventional cellular phones, LSI semiconductors will have to be improved to extend battery life, according to a top DoCoMo executive in charge of network infrastructure... "It's not a matter of months but a matter of a year," he said, adding that DoCoMo alone cannot solve the problem and that cooperation among handset makers is becoming a necessity.." It's not a matter of months but a matter of a year.... Why a year? What magical happens in 12 months? In the interim, will NTT give subscribers hand-powered cell phone battery generators to keep them powered on an hour-to-hour basis? Perhaps spinning the generators while talking and downloading data will become the new fashion.