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

To: scratchmyback who wrote (26170)	8/28/2002 11:39:12 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196740

A couple of commments on your post.... 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. This is clearly idiotic. PCS is going to have to open up their services with respect to both ringtones and pictures. The current method to get a picture onto your handset must have been developed in a committee with 50 people on it. No one person could have thought up something that bad. 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? They absolutely have to fix the latency. Luckily, it is not a problem with CDMA (or it would show up on laptops) but rather with their back-end software/infrastructure. This should be fixable....though why they couldnt have done this during Beta testing is beyond me. 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. There has ALWAYS been a 3 month free trial with Vision. It is on the original flyers which were given out when Vision was launched (I have one in front of me). I dont know the current status of their billing system but I doubt an inability to track data usage has anything to do with CDMA infrastructure. Moreover - the activation of the Vision services is failing for most of the old Sprint customers switching from 2G to Vision. From the latest messages on the various PCS boards I visit, this problem seems to have been fixed. 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? I havent been to a PCS store in about a week or two....but Amazon shows the Samsung A500 ready to ship in 24 hours. The LG5350 is either in stores or on the way. The Samsung N400 looks like it is still 2-3 weeks out. The Sanyo 4900 already has widespread availability. I dont think that phone availability has been too bad. I agree with your comments on content. They should have had Hotmail, AOL and AIM ready to go from day one. Some screw-ups....but the real test will be how quickly they respond to problems. Slacker

To: scratchmyback who wrote (26170)	8/28/2002 1:16:41 PM
From: mightylakers	Respond to of 196740

Sprint has done a lot of dumb things recently. Instead of taking a step by step approach it chooses to start the networks nation wide with one shot. That really leaves the door wide open to a lot of potential problems. Doing things in a Lab is one thing, doing things with user friendly test is another thing and doing things with the real commercial customers is yet another thing. Not only launching nation wide service need far more effort in coordination, management, training, experience. From a technical point of view, it is very important to have a throughout test market to go on for enough time before you push into wider distribution. Not only the management showed a lot of ineptness as far as making the right decision, but also Sprint's engineering capability. They spent a awful long time in trying to make Java work, while in the same, actually shorter period of time Qcom has the BREW start and running. Already plagued with their financial strength, they just keep on throwing money into a field they have no business of doing it. Instead of letting the door open to the outside developers, they idiotically tried to have everything under their control. It will serve them far better if they can spend those precious money into improving their so called national coverage instead of some little gadgets. It will serve them far better if they spend a little more time to make their backbone faster. Now as far as ringtone availability, don't kid yourself, it's a common practice among all the US carriers to NOT let their customers to access outside source, not just CDMA. because the CDMA infrastructure cannot track data usage of consumers. Where did you get that information? Do you really know what you are talking about?