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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: axial who wrote (4302)	11/12/2001 12:15:51 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Which brings us back to Peter's point - "3G is a 'brand' for getting new spectrum from regulators, not a more efficient use of existing spectrum." The truth of this depends on what part of the world you look at. The North and South American operators are going to be forced to implement 3G technologies in the existing bands. This is going to provide a dramatic increase in capacity in the existing bands.....particuarly for the TDMA operators. The rest of the world is going to be implementing 3G in the new spectrum. These bands will be more spectrally efficient than the old bands....but it will be a long time before the old bands are upgraded to 3G. Assumptions about growth and demographics are iffy; if the scenario I'm proposing is wrong, then what motivation would there be for capacity increases, by modulation changes, or otherwise? None, that I can see. It all becomes the pipe dreams of engineers. Is that what you're saying? My general belief is that the capacity increases supplied by 3G technologies will allow two things. 1) Wireless handsets minutes of usage per month will approach wireline rates (1000 minutes). The penetration rate will top 80% in most parts of the industrialized world. 2) Wireless data to handsets and laptops will be enabled. Handsets will be able to stream audio/video and laptops will be able to surf the net at speeds above 200Kbps. The laptop service will be priced at a premium to take advantage of business users. Now the real question mark for me is the ability of wireless operators (using current technologies) to provide a broadband service to the home. I dont know if there is enough available spectrum to roll-out a flat-rate nationwide service. My current thought is that the service couldnt be nationwide....however, outside of the largest markets (top 10) there may be enough spectrum to allow a service like this. It could be 12-18 months before we have enough data to back up this conclusion. The attractions of this type of service for both the consumer and the operator are pretty compelling. The modem would probably be sub-$200 with no installation costs. A consumer would have data services with speeds between 200-300Kbps. If broadband applications develop to the point where greater speeds are needed, new technologies would need to be rolled-out. Slacker