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

To: Jim Mullens who wrote (32951)	2/28/2003 1:18:02 PM
From: w molloy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196633

>> 5 to 10 years left for GSM, Says Top Vodafone Man Martyn Warwick TelecomTV 26/02/03 11:05 Article courtesy of Eric L on the Nok+Wirless thread. A related question (probably answered many times, but I missed them...)When do QCOM's principal CDMA patents start to run out? Alan Harper, Vodafone’s Group Strategy Director, is of the opinion that GSM, the most ubiquitous technology platform in the history of telecommunications, (it now has close to a billion users worldwide) has between five and ten years of useful (and profitable) life left in it before being eclipsed by an evolved, global 3G technology and standard. Speaking in an exclusive interview held last week at the 3GSM World Congress held in Cannes in the South of France, Alan Harper enthused about GSM’s continuing popularity and adaptability, whilst also looking forward to the platform’s eventual and inevitable demise. He pointed out that more and more is being squeezed of GSM as a base technology and that, in turn, is driving increased average revenue per user And increasing ARPU is the main goal of the world’s mobile network operators as the market matures and saturates and churn remains an intractable problem. Alan Harper says that GSM, as enhanced with new services such as MMS, GPRS roaming and other new data applications will continue to drive global ARPU for up to as long as ten years. Mr. Harper is also of the belief that as the GSM market continues to mature, further consolidation within the industry is inevitable. Citing as examples the complete withdrawal from the market of operators in Portugal, Scandinavia and several other parts of the world, he says that commercial pressures will determine those mobile operators that will survive and those that will fail. As a rule of thumb, he thinks that, “The process [of consolidation] will continue. I think three or four operators in a country is probably a viable number, but beyond that it becomes questionable”. Alan Harper also regards GSM as the ultimate and optimum technology platform from which the seamless evolution through wideband CDMA and on to a genuine and ubiquitous 3G future will be managed. “GSM allows for backward compatibility, will ease business migration to next generation services and will permit the seamless evolution to 3G without discontinuity,” he says. On the subject of how Vodafone’s vision of 3G has changed since the technology was first mooted, Alan Harper says that as GSM has continued to change and adapt it has been possible to provide applications and capabilities on it that were regarded as impossible a few years ago. He says, “GSM is actually delivering what are really 3G applications, such as picture messaging and video streaming, even if, at present, in a limited capacity”. As a result, Vodafone’s view on 3G has inevitably been changed. Part of the result of that reappraisal is embodied in initiatives such as Vodafone Live and Vodafone Office, which the operator is positioning as an “umbrella under which 3G technologies can move forward”. Here the emphasis is very firmly on useful and compelling services and applications rather than on technology for its own sake. Turning to the reality of the 3G experience as moderated through the several trials that Vodafone is conducting in various parts of the world, Alan Harper enthused about the fact that 3G technologies are now inter-working well between different equipment from different vendors and manufacturers (this was very much not the case a year or so ago), and confided that one of the major stumbling blocks to the full-scale introduction of commercial 3G on Vodafone’s part remains the continuing difficulties being experienced in the software hand-off of calls between 3G and 2.5G networks. Nonetheless, Mr. Harper is sufficiently optimistic that these difficulties will soon be overcome and forecast that Vodafone will introduce its commercial 3G services in Europe, “later this year, probably in the Autumn”. “We’ve made huge investments in 3G”, he said, “In addition to the massive sums spent on licences, we are spending £26 billion on network capital expenditure as we build out the 3G network. It is a big bet for the future but at Vodafone we believe that the market for 3G will develop over the next ten years”. To see TelecomTV’s full video interview with Alan Harper at 3GSM World Congress, check out our GSM TV channel or select the link below: telecomtv.com <<