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To: Ramsey Su who wrote (7703)	1/28/1998 11:57:00 PM
From: Asterisk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

I will address your questions one at a time. I don't know how ETSI works but from Stealthys article it appears that yes, it is entirely possible that there could be no agreement and no standard adopted. If that was the case, in my opinion yes, it is a win for QCOM and all of the allies of wideband cdmaOne. I have not read either proposal so I cannot give you a definative answer of what they contain or don't contain. I can however speculate based on the people that are voting and the proposers of the standards. Based on common knowledge and a little guess work I would be entirely stunned if both of the proposals did not contain migration paths (or the possibility and likelyhood of migration paths). You have to remember that this is the same group of people that are current owners of GSM equipment. It would be fairly foolish of them to not have the upgrade path from GSM to this new 3G. A path from IS95 to this new standard is another matter. Many of these companies, if not most, have a vested interest in NOT allowing a path from IS95, and the possibility of a path for the QCOM patents that accompany it. The point of my second illustration (the circular nut) in my first email addresses your second question precisely. If a standard is passed that is not attainable it is still a completely valid standard. The problem is that it is useless because it specifies something that cannot come to pass. If I wrote a standard on the com badges in Star Trek it would be a perfectly valid standard (provided someone recognized it). The problem would be that it would be absolutely useless. Noone can make them so what difference does a standard make? Your last question is a perplexing one and someone else may provide a better answer than I. If one proposal or the other is adopted from what I remember this is the proposal that everyone in all of Europe will have to follow (just like GSM). They have a different system over there. They decide to make just one standard the system that everyone has to use, so if you don't like it tough! That is the way that they control competetion, by legislating it. In the USA we accept a whole lot of standards and let the market decide which is best. That is why we have TDMA, CDMA, and GSM systems all running at the same time from different companies. In any event whoever the bureaucratic authority is over in Europe (like the FCC here) they have to accept any system that is installed. If they say that only GSM systems are allowed then that is all that can be installed in their area of control.