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

To: pyslent who wrote (39048)	1/31/2004 10:36:45 PM
From: Jim Mullens	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197017

Hi plysent- Re:GSM1x / WCDMA comparative cost discussion and your statement “Your post (TB) 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).” I had a re-hash of this on the G&K Mod thread a few weeks ago and cited a Brian Modoff report that came to a much, much higher figure for AWE’s WCDMA deployment. Your $6 to $10/POP would suggest between $1.28B and $2.14B for AWE’s 214M POPs. At your figures, It would have been/ would be a SLAM DUNK for AWE move ahead with WCDMA. Instead, AWE had put the business on the block. Shoot, it’s going to cost VZN $2B to begin their EV-DO in their major markets. At 23.5M subs, that would suggest between $54 and $91 per sub. The following article (sorry no link) provides some interesting figures for Europe’s WCDMA deployment costs (without spectrum licenses). Snip>>> “European mobile operators paid a combined total of £110 billion (That's $195 Billion US) for their UMTS licences and are estimated to have to spend an additional £105 billion (That's $183 Billion US) on deploying their 3G networks and services. The Financial Times report cites figures from the major European telcos that show that just £12 billion out of the projected total has been spent on UMTS rollouts to date.”<<<<<<<<<<<<< At $183B for approximately 355M Western Europe subs, that works out to about $515 per subscriber, or about a magnitude of 5 to 10 times higher that what you are suggesting. The article was dated about 3 months ago and granted with the disinflation in the telecom sector prices could now be lower, but 5 to 10 times lower???????????? Yep, I’m still skeptical. AWE has probably contracted their WCDMA deployment with Wal-Mart, right? Jmho jim Subject: Euro carriers cry for help Date: 10/17/2003 9:30 PM Pacific Standard Time From: STKPIKRTOM MsgId: <20031018003024.22541.00003916@mbs-r07.aol.com> Free 3G country profiles and mobile news from BWCS European 3G Operators Cry For Help (16/10/2003, BWCS staff) Leading European mobile operators are lobbying the EU Commission in an effort to win concessions on 3G licence conditions. According to the Financial Times, the European telcos have appealed to the EU’s Information Society Commissioner, Erkki Liikanen, to aid the rollout of 3G networks by encouraging the relaxation of national coverage deadlines and allowing increased cooperation between UMTS licensees. European mobile operators paid a combined total of £110 billion (That's $195 Billion US) for their UMTS licences and are estimated to have to spend an additional £105 billion (That's $183 Billion US) on deploying their 3G networks and services. The Financial Times report cites figures from the major European telcos that show that just £12 billion out of the projected total has been spent on UMTS rollouts to date. In putting their case to the EU the telcos also highlighted concerns that there were too many licensees operating in certain European 3G markets and that permitting spectrum and licence trading and increased infrastructure sharing would help to alleviate this problem.

To: pyslent who wrote (39048)	2/1/2004 11:00:35 AM
From: kech	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197017

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? I don't know much about this comparison. I think the bulk of the cost difference for rural areas, almost 3 times the cost, comes from the coverage issue of 800 Mhz vs 2.1 Ghz. Just some guess on cost of deployment in the same frequency would include the usual economies of scale arguments which in this case would favor CDMA vs WCDMA. There are also some claims that the asynchronous technology in WCDMA involves less of a soft handoff as in the synchronous CDMA. This might further require WCDMA base stations to be closer to get the same coverage as CDMA even at the same frequency. But I don't have hard data on these cost differences. There could also be some additional features such as the coding differences that give either greater coverage or faster data with CDMA vs WCDMA but I haven't seen detailed cost or performance details due to these matters. Perhaps Jim's approach of looking at installation cost estimates for ATT or Hutchison is the best way to do this.