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To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (120450)	6/15/2002 2:03:11 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

the problem i see with PCS is they have a huge amount of debt--some $14 BILLION last i checked. imho this is a big disadvantage for PCS compared to AWE. AWE was very smart to get a big investment by DoCoMo while the stock was still relatively high. While it is true that PCS' debt is about twice the size of AWE's it is also true that when total non-current liabilities are compared the results are much closer. I'll concede that PCS probably did not take adequate advantage of their earlier stock price, BUT Much more important than liabilities is cash flow and cash available. Of course liabilities (and the interest associated with them) effect the cash flow, but there are other items like capital expenditures which can have an even bigger effect. By this measure AWE is in much more trouble than PCS. PCS and AWE have about the same amount of total cash on hand (about $1.7B and $1.5B respectively), but AWE is burning through it much faster (about $1.2B vs $0.4B per quarter for PCS). How can this be? Because AWE picked the wrong technology and are having to spend enormous amounts of money on capital equipment - and I would expect this to continue for another few quarters at which point the upgrade to EDGE or W-CDMA will start the process again. Bottom line - technology does matter. Clark This is where the rubber meets the road