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

To: John Biddle who wrote (32276)	2/12/2003 6:49:43 PM
From: John Biddle	Respond to of 196605

America Movil, Nokia to deploy EDGE in Ecuador and Colombia 02/12/2003 - Source: latintrade.com (BNamericas.com) - Regional mobile holding company America Movil (NYSE: AMX) has chosen Finnish network equipment vendor Nokia (NYSE: NOK) to supply EDGE network infrastructure for its subsidiaries in Colombia and Ecuador, Nokia said Tuesday in a statement. The deployment of the two nationwide networks, for Colombian mobile operator Comcel and Ecuadorian mobile operator Conecel, respectively, will start immediately, Nokia said. The deployment could very well signify that Colombia and Ecuador will become the global testing ground for EDGE technology. There are no operators currently offering EDGE services anywhere in the world, independent consultant Jose Otero told BNamericas, confirming comments to the same extent made to BNamericas by Qualcomm's chairman and founder Irwin Jacobs in December. Otero noted that America Movil first expressed interest in EDGE some two years ago for Mexican subsidiary Telcel, but has yet to offer EDGE services via its recently launched GSM/GPRS network. The deal will allow America Movil to introduce GSM voice and GPRS/EDGE data services to Colombia and Ecuador. The network will be EDGE capable from day one. Otero said deploying EDGE "makes a lot of sense" for America Movil in Colombia and Ecuador. EDGE will give America Movil greater spectrum efficiency on their network, which they will need now that main competitor BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) has deployed CDMA2000 1xRTT networks in both countries. In contrast, America Movil's dominance in Mexico means it is not under pressure to immediately upgrade to EDGE in that country, Otero noted. Telcel controls some three-fourths of the Mexican mobile market. Under the terms of the contract, Nokia will supply its high-capacity, end-to-end GSM/GPRS/EDGE solution for 800MHz mobile service, including core network, radio access and related services. Included in the contract are Nokia UltraSite GSM/EDGE base stations, as well as the Nokia circuit-switched core network, Nokia GPRS packet-core network, and the Nokia NetAct operations support systems (OSS) solution. Nokia said America Movil subscribers can expect the prompt availability of 800MHz phones in several price and performance categories. The company already offers several GSM/GPRS 800/1900 MHz dual-band phones and recently announced the industry''''s first triple-band 800/900/1900 EDGE terminal, the Nokia 6200. However, handset prices, unless heavily subsidized, are likely to be prohibitively expensive for end users, Otero said. This is because there are no EDGE operators buying such handsets, and economies of scale are very important in determining handset prices, he said. Reflecting on the handset pricing problem, Otero emphasized the main reason for deploying EDGE has less to do with the value-added services America Movil could offer over a 2.75G network, than it does with the added spectrum efficiency that such a network provides. In the long-term America Movil will migrate to a third-generation UMTS (WCDMA) network, Otero said. However, UMTS remains on the horizon, given its high deployment costs, and perhaps more significantly, because most Latin American operators do not have enough radiomagnetic spectrum on hand to deploy it. Mexico-based America Movil has over 32 million wireless subscribers across Latin America, including 20 million in Mexico, where Sweden's Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY) is helping the company deploy a GSM/GPRS network with MMS capability. Comcel has 2.82 million subscribers, and Conecel has 932,000 subscribers. America Movil is the sister company to Mexico's largest telco Telmex (NYSE: TMX).

To: John Biddle who wrote (32276)	2/12/2003 6:52:33 PM
From: John Biddle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196605

Decoding data e4engineering.com Researchers from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs yesterday revealed architectural and performance details of the world's first turbo decoder chip for third-generation (3G) wireless data terminals that supports the evolving High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) standard. The Bell Labs-designed chip, which will be licensed to manufacturers of wireless data terminals, is powerful enough to handle data rates up to 24 Megabits per second (Mbps)- nearly ten times faster than today's most advanced mobile networks. The chip was described during a presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) by two of the Bell Labs researchers who developed the chip. HSDPA is an evolutionary enhancement to Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) spread-spectrum technology, also known as wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA). The chip is fast enough not only to support first-generation HSDPA systems, which will offer transmission speeds between 5 and 10 Mbps, but also future Multiple-Input/Multiple-Output (MIMO) HSDPA systems, which are expected to achieve peak data rates up to 20 Mbps. The chip achieves this speed in part thanks to a unique implementation of turbo codes - software programs that perform error correction by adding - to each bit of data transmitted - several redundant bits that help the decoder reconstruct the original signal without errors at the receiving end. In addition, the chip also can be reconfigured for different packet sizes and data rates on the fly, making it compatible with the variable data rates arising from Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) - a key capacity-enhancing feature of HSDPA. A Bell Labs research team in Sydney, Australia, designed the turbo decoder - the same team that last October announced the industry's first chip that incorporates Bell Labs Layered Space Time (BLAST) MIMO technology for mobile communications. The BLAST chip enables terminals to receive data at 19.2 Mbps in a 3G mobile network. The design team chose a highly parallel architecture for the turbo decoder chip and employed a new compression technique that enables it to operate at a low clock frequency and yet still achieve high data rates. By operating at low clock frequencies, the chip consumes very little power. Dynamic power reduction techniques have also been incorporated that adjust the amount of power the decoder consumes depending upon how and where the chip is being used - for example, offering more power if a user is driving in a car than if he or she is stationary in an office. This technique guarantees maximum performance while creating less of a drain on the terminal's battery. Additional technical details about the chip can be found in the researchers' recently published paper, 'A 24 Mbps Radix-4 LogMAP Turbo Decoder for 3GPP-HSDPA Mobile Wireless,' which is available here.