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

To: kech who wrote (39038)	1/31/2004 11:25:10 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197031

If Slacker's data is right, he says that if the GSM1x is at 800 Mhz then it would be 225% more expensive to build out at 1900Mhz and another 20% more at 2.1 GHz. The total cost difference would then be 270% more expensive for WCDMA at 2.1 GHz vs GSM1x at 800 MHz. That would only be true in the case of a network built in a very rural area or for highway coverage. My understanding is that the number of base stations needed in a city is not limited by the potential radius but rather by the capacity. So, the number of base stations that Sprint PCS needs to cover a city like Chicago isnt substantially different than what Verizon needs. However, if you try to cover the highway between Chicago and Minneapolis, you would need a great deal more base stations at 1900MHz than at 800MHz. Slacker

To: kech who wrote (39038)	1/31/2004 7:05:43 PM
From: pyslent	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 197031

GSM1x is cheap (for GSM upgrade), not solely because it uses GSM-MAP, but also because it uses slivers of spectrum at lower frequencies (than W-CDMA at 2.1GHz) which allows a lower cost of buildout. Thanks Tom, point well taken. Implicit in your reference to Slacker's data on cell density (as a function of frequency) is the assumption that for each base station, it costs the same to deploy GSM1X as it does wCDMA. Is that a valid assumption? It was my uneducated guess that the deployment costs (per basestation) would be pretty close between the two, but this was met with some skepticism from Jim. Your post suggests that you also believe that all other things being equal (ie, for the same frequency), overlaying a 1X RAN costs as much as overlaying a wCDMA RAN ($6-10 per POP, according to AWE).