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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 (39073)	2/2/2004 10:05:56 PM
From: Jim Mullens	Respond to of 197031

Thanks for sharing your insight (Slacker & Tom also) and for taking the time to review the Modoff report. Good catch, it does appear that the legend labels (RAN and Core) are mislabeled in the AWE charts and RAN should represent approximately 90% of the cost, not visa versa. Additionally as you stated (Slacker and Plysent) , for AWE it appears that WCDMA can be “overlaid” on their existing 1900MHz network (following the GSM/GPRS/EDGE upgrade) and thus reuse their existing core infrastructure and therefore the term “fork lift” upgrade for the next step to WCDMA does not appear appropriate as most of the WCDMA network would make use of existing cell sites. I assume then that the term “fork-lift” upgrade then applies only to Europe, or to the U.S. carriers that operate at 800Mhz which requires many additional cell sites? As you also stated, at $100k or less for a new WCDMA base station (BTS) plus ancillary equipment for each of AWE’s 20K estimated cell sites, this does not appear to be a “show stopper” for nationwide WCDMA deployment as suggested by Modoff. The question then arises- why is AWE bailing at a this time after spending the bulk of their CAPEX to get their network upgraded to GSM/GPRS/EDGE, when only a fraction of that amount ($1- $2B) is needed to the complete their final step to 3G (WCDMA/ UMTS/ 3GSM)? And, if EDGE were used in the rural areas, the WCDMA CAPEX would even be less. The big positive in this for Qualcomm investors is that an additional $1- $2B is “all” that is required for WCDMA to become a reality in the U.S. which could translate into royalties from perhaps 70% or more of the handsets sold instead of only 40% or so. In regards to Qualcomm’s GSM1x cost detail (prior post), at $88K per cell site for the EV-DO upgrade, Verizon for $1B could upgrade 11,363 cell sites to EV-DO. (Perhaps the price of an EV-DO upgrade has also fallen). Does anyone know the number of Verizon’s cell sites?