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

To: John Biddle who wrote (20019)	3/7/2002 10:11:20 AM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196644

John, << when a carrier starts to put in GSM1x, can they do so on, say, half or less of their existing GSM spectrum >> That is pretty typically how an overlay is deployed. It begins with some "spectrum clearing". In order to accomplish this, in some cases, capacity for the legacy air interface will have to be increased initially by adding legacy base stations, since a portion of the spectrum has been cleared in a given geography and consequently capacity reduced to make room for the new air interface. USCC will be doing this when they overlay CDMA on their existing ANSI-41 TDMA network. When they have made sufficient progress with the overlay, they will stop accepting new subscribers for TDMA, and will make a concerted effort to convert existing subscribers to CDMA. Eventually legacy base stations can be removed altogether (because of the increased capacity of 1xRTT) or replaced by CDMA base stations. In the USCC case there are no dual-mode CDMA/TDMA handsets, so the complete migration will take some time. Essentially AWS is doing a similar thing with their parallel existing ANSI-41 TDMA network and their GSM network buildout. In their first phase they are using 10 MHz of their 1900 MHz spectrum for GSM. In the AWS example much of this is unused spectrum that can be tapped, but in some cases (up to) 10 MHz spectrum currently used for TDMA is cleared. They are not currently tapping into their 800 Mhz spectrum which is still 100% TDMA with some very small remnants of AMPS. In the AWS example dual-mode (TDMA/GSM) and tri-mode GAIT (AMPS/GSM/TDMA) handsets will be deployed to ease the transition. At some point in time probably no single mode TDMA handsets will be sold on the AWS network. Whoops ... peaking ahead I see that engineer did a nice job of answering your question, but I'll let mine stand anyway. - Eric -