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To: sag who wrote (19255)	3/31/2002 4:56:50 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

sag, << With regard to capacity, it appears to the layman, that AWE's and Cingular's decision to use GSM instead of TDMA or CDMAS had nothing to do with capacity issues. >> That's my opinion. Capacity (or spectral efficiency) is CDMA's (cdmaOne/cdma2000/WCDMA) biggest selling point and it is a legitimate one particularly in the capacity constrained America's. When making major technology decisions, however, spectral efficiency and air interfaces are just some of the decision points carriers consider. Essentially they evaluate the whole platform. << If CDMA1X adds an additional 1.5X spectrum efficiency to CDMAOne, one can surmise that 1x is 4.5-5.25x more efficient than GSM or TDMA. >> That is probably about right ... today, if not tomorrow. It appears that cdmaOne is legitimately about 1.65x more efficient than cdmaOne, and cdmaOne perhaps 3.25 more efficient than GSM and maybe 2.75 times IS-136 TDMA, so cdma2000 1xRTT today is probably around that that 5.25x you calculate .... ... but that is before AMR, frequency reuse, smart antennas, yada, yada. There are lots of ways to skin the capacity cat. << AWE went with GSM for handset selection and a perceived easier migration to WCDMA at the request of DoCoMo. The almost $10billion investment by DoCoMo I'm sure played in that decision making process. >> I consider that to be popular mythology. Although it was not made public at the time, AWS made the decision to migrate to EDGE (TDMA-EDGE), as a migration step to WCDMA in July of 1999, skipping EGPRS altogether - several months before Lynette Luna comically wrote her RCR News article with the headline, in 72 pt type, "AT&T Wireless Considers 1xRTT" and CDG splashed it across their website, and my fellow Qualcommers exclaimed, Oh, boy! Oh boy! More than a year later they altered that migration path, forever changing the face of the Americas. Possibly DoCoMo had some influence, but I really think that the weaknesses of ANSI-41 based TDMA EDGE, and Ericsson's and Nokia's (and Siemens and Nortel) decision to quickly evolve GSM-850 gear (and handsets) really were the clincher. << << TDMA and GSM have similar capacity claims, so why switch to GSM ? >> They made a platform decision and a standards decision, and considered bearers, and VAS, and international roaming, and multi-mode handsets, and all of those things that constitute the "GSM/3GSM platform. As Grahame Lynch aptly put it, in response to George Gilder's May 1, 2000 scathing, vitriolic, and hyperbolic, article in the Wall Street Journal trashing AWS's plans to migrate to EDGE, in an article called "On Being Gildered": The financial community was misled when a pundit forgot the difference between an air interface and a standard ... ... Gilder’s tendency to hyperbole means that when he releases the bile, it comes on really thick and heavy ... ... 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 ... Gilder’s contends that TDMA has a capacity disadvantage against CDMA ... ... This is true if you take the air interface in isolation ... ... 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 [sic] 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 ... << Best, - Eric -