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

To: amseybold who wrote (26140)	8/28/2002 11:01:17 AM
From: scratchmyback	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196724

Andy, I have a couple of questions and comments about Sprint´s 1X launch, your views on this subject would be very much appreciated! First of all, is it really a smart idea to associate Vision with "3G" in public? It's impossible to even download ringtones for non-Sprint sources - the so-called 3G service forces consumers to use only Sprint ringtone service, which has an extremely limited selection of products. With the old European 2G GSM, consumers have at least 20 times wider selection of tones than brand-new Vision customers have. By denying consumers access to outside sources, Sprint is in effect crippling the Vision from the start. What good does the talk about data speeds do when the latency effect means that access to phone services is just as slow as it was with 2G? Only a vanishingly small fraction of users actually buy a laptop card - the rest are already feeling betrayed by the latency problems that affect all phone services. Apparently Sprint hasn't figured out how to do the billing for the data services, so some reps are telling customers that the first three months of the service are free. It seems strange that a cutting-edge 3G program is changing the pricing structure only days after the launch, because the CDMA infrastructure cannot track data usage of consumers. Moreover - the activation of the Vision services is failing for most of the old Sprint customers switching from 2G to Vision. Despite serious delays, Sprint is launching Vision without content, without billing system and without a smooth activation process. Plus the national ad campaign is highlighting phones that are not widely available. This seems astonishingly dumb. Why not wait for decent production volumes before doing the ads campaign?