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Technology Stocks : Nokia (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (462)	12/16/1997 6:56:00 AM
From: tero kuittinen	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 34857

Good news for a change. British Telecom has announced it supports the Nokia/Ericsson model for third generation infrastructure solution. N/E model now has the backing of Telecom Italia Mobile, the Dutch KPN, Swisscom, the Swedish Telia, Finlands very own Tele and Germany's second biggest mobile operator Mannesman (!). The last is a sweet victory, because it means that Mannesman is snubbing the Siemens-backed alternative model. It looks like pretty much all the operators are now uniting behind the Nordic model; no operator has publicly announced backing to the Siemens/Alcatel model. This alternative model does have the backing of several manufacturers, such as Nortel, Motorola and Sony. But I think that people will see this as what it is: a transparent attempt of the competing firms to stop the Nordic mobile bandwagon. I think this spoiler attempt should be countered by the way NTT-DoCoMo has warmly embraced the N/E proposal. Japanese support is very important. The operators should know what is best for them in the business they are running and the fact that the Swiss and German operators are backing Nokia and Ericsson shows that they are not being influenced by a nationalistic bias. It does look like some French and German mobile operators will eventually tip over to the Siemens/Alcatel alliance, because they have such close ties to these companies. It might still turn out to be a nailbiter. The first round of test voting takes probably place today according to Helsingin Sanomat. It won't be binding, but might provide some clues for the future. There will be 1 900 votes cast... Nokia as a company can cast 45 votes, Finnish Tele company 9 and so forth according to a complicated weighted formula. Today's voting is important if there is some sort of unexpected shift in the power of balance... if one of the standard proposals gets a knock-out result now it might deal the other one a lethal blow. This might have a major impact on several stock prices on Wall Street. But probably not. Let's see. Anyway, the final result will surely have some major consequences. God help us if Nokia loses that... we might dip below 60. Tero