3GSM WCDMA and 3GSM EDGE Commercial Availability/Viability
Slacker,
<< there are a couple of different versions of that story >>
The versions that came out of that ill fated London lunch where IMJ made his sales pitch for 1xEV-DO as an alternative to WCDMA one time too many - extending the FUD campaign that he and Dr. Junior had initiated the previous October - are all similar. That said, no journalist covering the mini-event directly quoted him. The common theme reported by several that attended, however, was that he substituted the phrase "commercial viability" for the phrase "commercial availability" they both had been using for the prior 4 months.
Never being one to hide his light under a bushel he did amplify his comments one month later at CTIA in Las Vegas:
"If there's a significant wait for infrastructure equipment, then I see an opportunity for 1x and 1xEV. That is a possibility. I hope that their [operators] first choice [W-CDMA] does work out. [Qualcomm is taking the task of selling 1xEV to Europe very seriously] ... there's an interesting business case here." - Tony Dennis, Total Telecom, 21 March 2001 -
It might have been a possibility in his mind, but the reality was that despite the fact that 3GPP had failed to achieve forward-backward GSM/GPRS compatibility with the 'R99' standard in the December 2000 plenary, they did for the most part in the March 2001 plenary, and most certainly did so in the June plenary, and commercial WCDMA infrastructure began shipping pretty much on schedule - with just a 3 to 6 month delay at the outside.
The further reality was that capital available to carriers had rapidly started to dry up in the six weeks preceeding that London lunch, the economy was headed south rapidly, and telecom stocks had taken a vicious pounding.
<< in the months after that original statement, there are numerous conferences/interviews where IJ is directly quoted as saying "commercial quantities in 2004/2005". >>
In each conference /interview he refined his definition of "commercial viability."
The distinction is important, as is the definition of "commercial availability," and Qualcomm set the benchmark for "commercial availability" when 1xRTT supposedly commercially launched in Korea on October 1 2000 with only a small portion of the MSM5000 powered 20,000 SK Teletech handsets promised, available, and none for sale commercially.
Typically "commercially available" follows some relatively significant field testing on a live network, like AWS has been doing in key markets for the last several months.
In Seoul, the "commercial launch" of 1xRTT was a commercial trial, and the Korean press correctly referred to it as such until January 2001.
As for 1xEV-DO, it was "commercially available" - if you believe the SKT press releases, and Qualcomm, CDG, and Qualcomm sponsored 3GToday hype - in late January 02. In reality, however, there were no commercially available handsets available when the World Cup rolled around five months later, despite the fact that Samsung and LG had publicly committed to have them commercially available, taking the glow off the hype surrounding both the technology and the event, and by IMJ's own definition IS-856 won't be commercially viable until 2004, and maybe even 2005, and we are still waiting to see it (really) commercially available in IMT-2000 core spectrum.
<< One of the people that turned out to be wrong was me. I was predicting that we would see small quantities in '02, with some real launches by the 4th quarter of '03. >>
I was another. We were both wrong on that score. I predicted pretty much the same thing, and going back even 6 months I anticipated that we would see several more commercial WCDMA launches - however soft - from GSM incumbents, in this calendar year.
On a positive note, and in view of the fact that the established GSM incumbent base is not the least bit interested in 1xEV-DO or any Qualcomm alternatives to GERAN (GSM/EDGE) and WCDMA and the HSDPA extension of same in IMT-2000 spectrum - new or old - I think that what Qualcomm has accomplished since February 2001 is potentially quite significant as relates to the chipset side of their business.
They had already started to engage in 3GPP activities and had cut WCDMA into their chipset roadmap, but they significantly stepped up their engagement, and have increasingly devoted people resources & R&D to it. They made up lost ground rather quickly, and were assisted not only by the fact that WCDMA was indeed delayed beyond originally anticipated time frames, but also by the fact that it had finally dawned on someone that GSM carriers weren't remotely considering a change in migration path. Concurrently they significantly staffed up their marketing and support base in Europe, China, and to some degree in Japan. They also focused on achieving a high degree of integration even in early chipset designs, and the MSM6250 should be on a par with competitive chipsets used in early volume ramps which hopefully will occur next fall.
Most impressive, to me, has been the successful strategy and tactics they adopted in engaging directly with key global WCDMA carriers in requirements definition and IOT for WCDMA handsets - particularly with Vodafone, but others as well - rather than relying strictly on their value chain to do that, and by engaging directly in the IOT process with all the 3GSM WCDMA infra vendors, not just those that are key members of their value chain.
China will tell the story, but the direction of comparative 3G technology adoption by carriers worldwide has been pretty much set, even if the pace of transition is not clear.
One thing I am waiting for is the incorporation of EGPRS in chipsets on Qualcomm's roadmap. While it isn't needed now, I have a distinct feeling that it will be 1 year from now - in production chipsets, not just samples - this comment from Qualcomm's San Mateo marketing arm made last week to the 3G World Congress to the contrary:
"The reasons that CDMA2000 is successful is exactly the reasons that EDGE will fail miserably." - Perry LaForge of CDG -
As his Bellevue counterpart put it last May:
Once referred to as "a technology that would never see the light of day" or "just a U.S. based technology," EDGE is now often referenced as a 3G alternative in presentations by operators and analysts, and its benefits are included in all conversations on 3G services. No longer the "B side" of a hit record, wireless operators from Asia to Europe - and continents in between -- have moved EDGE to the top of their charts as a way to use existing spectrum to increase overall network capacity and data speeds. - Rod Nelson, Chairman, 3G Americas -
Unlike the London brunch, we do know exactly what IMJ said about EDGE one month later in Las Vegas:
"I don't think EDGE will see the light of day. I don't see there being an economic opportunity for EDGE." - Tony Dennis of Total Telecom -
To IMJ's credit, he acknowledged last week in London that EDGE was in play, beating the nationwide launch by AWS to the punch by over a week.
To Qualcomm's credit, they did a nice job, overall, with the Analysts Day presentations in London last week, IMO.
- Eric - |
