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

To: foundation who wrote (25993)	9/16/2002 2:21:54 PM
From: waitwatchwander	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196724

CAT may disqualify Ucom from bidding bangkokpost.net Partner Motorola won't import gear Komsan Tortermvasana The Communications Authority of Thailand is expected to disqualify the United Communication Industry (Ucom) group from further bidding for the state agency's 15-billion-baht CDMA expansion project, after one of its partners, Motorola, said it would not import equipment for tests. The CAT requires bidders who passed initial technical screening to import equipment for four months of field tests before it will consider the bidders' financial proposals. Ucom and a second group led by Lucent Technologies are competing for the mobile phone project. Ucom's partners were equipment suppliers Motorola, Samsung and Nortel Networks, while Lucent has joined with EPC Solution, a newly established Thai company. Industry sources said EPC had an indirect connection with the former owner of Tawan Mobile Telecom, which failed in earlier attempts to market CDMA service in Bangkok but failed. Tawan was later taken over by the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Group. A CAT source said Motorola had sought permission to use the mobile switching centre it was installing for the CDMA project in Bangkok and the central provinces for BFKT to test, instead of having to import more of the same equipment. BFKT was the original CDMA network provider for Bangkok and the central provinces. It is a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, which is a major shareholder of CAT Wireless Multimedia, the current service provider. BFKT is scheduled introduce CDMA service commercially by the end of this year in Bangkok and the central provinces. The CAT source said the bid committee would likely reject Motorola's proposal and require it to import equipment for new tests, just as the Lucent group would be asked to do. If Motorola insisted on using the existing equipment, then the CAT would suspend its rights to bid. That would lead to the automatic disqualification of Samsung and Nortel as well, since they had also been grouped with Ucom subsidiary Real Time in the bid. ``We considered that Ucom had advantages over other bidders because it partnered with three suppliers in the bid,'' said the source. ``When the group passed the first round, then the three suppliers needed to import three brands of equipment for field tests.'' The equipment includes a mobile switching centre, base station control, cell site and data call network, with a total value of about US$2 million. The source said Motorola had used mobile switching equipment manufactured by Nortel in the Bangkok CDMA project. Motorola needed to import more of the equipment for tests because it stated in the bid that it would use Nortel hardware, he said. He said Motorola had resubmitted proposal to use Motorola equipment but this was rejected because it was at odds with the conditions it proposed in its original bid. Meanwhile, a Ucom source said that Motorola was having problems with its mobile division following reports that it would be taken over by Siemens. As well, he said, Motorola was behind schedule in installing equipment for CAT Wireless Multimedia and cellular operator TA Orange. However, he said it was unfair to disqualify the whole group just because of the difficulties of one prospective supplier. The winning bidder for the project will build the CDMA network and lease it to the CAT for 12 years. It will receive 100% of the revenue from CDMA handset sales, and 27.5% of all airtime charges.