Jay, I too am anxiously awaiting VoIP via WiFi and CDMA, whichever is cheapest and best at a given location and time. Either way, I will win. RoamAD is a pure WiFi supplier roamad.com and QUALCOMM is integrating WiFi into their ASICs and software so that people can use whichever service suits better at the time and place.
The vast overcharging for cyberphone service, which should cost nearer $0 per minute than 30c a minute, will be a thing of the past. It will be a story with which to regale grandchildren much as I hear of horse and gig even now from my 86 year old mother in law.
Even now, if you were signed up to skype.com I could have a high quality VoIP conversation with you at zero cost. If we had 1xEV-DO [one of the 3G methods] we could do so on the hoof. If we had RoamAD's WiFi hot-zone service, we could use that. I've already used WiFi and Skype in RoamAD's network in Auckland.
VoIP is excellent news for QUALCOMM because CDMA is merely the technology for delivering packets through the aether and anything which makes subscribers happier and better able to gain value from mobile cyberspace is good for QUALCOMM and therefore good for me.
Sure, there is competition and some people will use Flarion, or other wireless technologies to access cyberspace, avoiding QUALCOMM's technology. So I suppose I don't really mean anything. But CDMA will be so ubiquitous that mobile devices will almost always include that technology as the fundamental access method, either of CDMA2000 or W-CDMA type [aka 3GSM, 3G, UMTS].
If people want a packet on the hoof, they'll click on their gadget which will send phragmented photons in CDMA mode, or via WiFi in the same device, which will be usually powered by an ASIC and software provided by QUALCOMM. If the ASIC is not provided by QUALCOMM, the provider will pay a royalty to QUALCOMM.
<my GSM works just fine, and guess what, I have no urgent requirement to go to CDMA. >
You are right. Your GSM works perfectly and you have no urgent requirement to go to CDMA, just as a chimpanzee's brain works perfectly and they have no urgent need to upgrade to the human-style brain. But would you really want to stay as a chimpanzee when the whole panoply of mobile cyberspace is available to you at low cost, anytime, anywhere?
With Google, SI, Yahoo! Email, Skype, banking, payments, maps, position location and a million other things available where you are, at speed, at low cost, secure, anytime, I can't imagine going without. Then there's BREW, which is as you read this, delivering services to subscribers and money to QUALCOMM. You should see the BREW growth rate. I secretly think that could be a fundamental enabling technology for all the applications people will want when mobile and worth more than the rest of QUALCOMM. It's mostly dopey games, ring-tones and stuff at present, but Pong* and PacMan were the harbingers of some big stuff although they seemed trivial at the time.
I'm sure people thought a horse and gig, a bag of gold and silver, a sword, a hat, warm coat, and a bath once a week was the height of luxury once upon a time. Why would they want a car, refrigerator, newspaper, television set or telephone, let alone GSM? Luddites, Amish, Pol Pot, Islamic Jihad and Ted Kaczynski know where it's at! None of that new-fangled stuff for them. They certainly wouldn't want CDMA with Skype loaded. I hadn't picked you as being of their ilk, but hey, each to their own.
I think you will have a CDMA device in your hot little hand by Xmas. TIA for the royalty and maybe you will buy a QUALCOMM chip with it.
As you say, talk anywhere in the world for $14.95 a month! You won't be able to do that with GSM, GPRS or EDGE. You will be able to do it with CDMA when the competition gets warmed up.
You do have an urgent need for CDMA, but don't know it yet. Opportunity cost is usually painless and not even recognized, but real even so. Chimps don't know what they are missing.
Happy little moron,
Sitting in the sun,
Doesn't know he's moron.
My God! perhaps I'm one?
Mqurice
* <All video games share a common ancestor—Pong. Pong is the great-granddaddy of them all, which begat, among other games. Avalanche, which begat, according to some authorities, Space Invaders, >http://www.gamearchive.com/General/Articles/ClassicNews/1981/Esquire2-81-Pg61.htm
Google got that for me in a moment! |
