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

To: Eric L who wrote (33109)	3/5/2003 3:21:35 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 197270

<CDMA handsets that worked were simply not available from anyone at any price at the time China decided to implement GSM.> Eric, actually, that's not quite right. They'd checked out subscriber growth in Los Angeles but couldn't get information - I suppose because the damn thing wasn't working very well and I recall the frustration of waiting, waiting, waiting to hear how many users were in Trenton and Los Angeles. But QUALCOMM was in the process of increasing to 13 kbps for better voice quality and twiddling the dial on how CDMA worked to get the required results. The service provider was learning how to make it happen. These things apparently take time, more's the pity. Handsets were available, but the overall quality, price and performance were not good enough to staunch the flood of GSM. The lies, misunderstandings and FUDD about CDMA would also have done a bit of work - don't forget that at that time there was a very major GSM Guild hagfish slime attack on CDMA. The slime gang also promised that if people went to GSM there was also VW-40 [aka W-CDMA] nirvana waiting just over the horizon. We know now, 8 years later, that the promise was a bunch of lies - especially the promise that "CDMA doesn't work, but if it does, we invented it back in 1890 and we'll have this hot-stuff VW-40 as an upgrade to your GSM network". Well, QUALCOMM was a minnow with interesting technology which was working, but not very well. Not well enough to go big on. Not when Nokia, L M Ericsson and the hagfish gang were rampaging with GSM and a whole new world just over the horizon. Bill Clinton's gang then decided they'd show China who was boss by bombing the embassy in Belgrade, just when China was getting very, very interested in CDMA which was obviously a lot better than they'd been led to believe. The smart, super-accurate bombs which got, by mistake, the Chinese Embassy was as smart as the people behind it. Really stupid. Well, you can imagine what Chinese thought about having their citizens blown up by Americans, right there in their own embassy! If China attacked a USA embassy, killing Americans, I dare say the attraction of Chinese products would drop off. So, that put the kibosh on CDMA for another couple of years. GSM went steaming on ahead, with Nokia and the GSM Guild doing an excellent job of developing the technology and keeping it so attractive that network benefits of CDMA weren't enough to cause a paradigm shift to CDMA. Thanks for the interesting history, as seen by some more people, each of whom has their own memory of events, what was important at the time and why things transpired as they did. It was good to see how those people saw CDMA and their process in getting to GSM. That fitted my memory. They didn't mention any political considerations, of which there were some - which is why the decisions bounced around at the Zhu Rongji level and probably Jiang Zemin too. Why things happen is invariably complex. Engineer gave a one line summary, which emphasized the important issue as he saw it, which was true as far as it went. Which didn't deny that stuff you have kindly provided, which itself is not the full story. We cannot replay the past in full - many of the cast have died, the stars have moved and entropy has increased yet again. I wonder how much the Chinese decision to go with GSM was affected by the lies from L M Ericsson and co about CDMA and the prospects for GSM. "Oh, that amazing WAP, GPRS, EDGE and W-CDMA; wait till you see how that goes!! Anyway, CDMA is dodgy at best and we invented the technology." You really think that wasn't in the decision matrix? "Hey, you wouldn't really want to go with the USA anyway would you? You know what they're like - spy planes all over the place, rattling their Tomahawks every time you mention Taiwan. Come over to the light side." Your opinionated recollections are appreciated too. He who has the true word, Mqurice PS: Have you heard of Bill Frezza? He is hereby dragged out for a ritual flogging - 1000 lashes, in blocks of 50 every fortnight, just as they do in the charm schools in Saudi Arabia. He may be dead, but he deserves a damn good flogging.