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To: tero kuittinen who wrote (7755)	1/30/1998 5:10:00 AM
From: John Cuthbertson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Tero, Wow, that was a long one. Must feel good to get that off your chest! Seriously, I just wanted to respond briefly to a couple of points. First, it's certainly true that the rate of uptake of digital vs. analog mobile phones has been slower in the U.S. than in Europe, but I don't think that's really attributable to dumb American consumers being confused by multiple standards. In fact, digital systems were introduced later here at least partly because they provided less of an advantage over analog than was the case in Europe. Here, you could use your AMPS phone anywhere across the whole continent, which was NOT the case with analog phones in Europe. (So perhaps in the analog case, "one standard" was our advantage rather than Europe's). Digital systems are still just coming on to the market here, even those based on the old GSM system. Consumers being "confused" by the availability of multiple standards is in my opinion a non-issue. People for the most part are not going to care what standards their phone complies with, only where they can use it. Soon enough, for all the choices, the answer to that question will be "everywhere". Also, you said: "CDMA phones are not catching up with the technological innovations of their GSM counterparts. How could they? R&D investment in the GSM sector is ten times higher than in CDMA sector." Well, it's true that there are some cool phones built for the GSM standard. BUT, all of those features you talk about that make certain models "advanced," whether long battery life or cool displays, have NOTHING to do with the GSM vs. CDMA air interface. I think I've said before that I expect that Nokia will be building CDMA phones with all of those nifty features, which will give them formidable products with which to compete in the CDMA market. Finally, I think you're a little early in proclaiming the "new European/Asian standard." Remember that NTT is not the only voice in Japan that will count. The Japanese cdmaOne carriers are going to care about compatibility with any next generation standard, and the Japanese bureaucracy have said that this should be a requirement. Also, you seem to forget about Korea when talking about Asia. Well, I see I've failed to achieve my goal of brevity. Oh well. Good night and good luck. ==John

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (7755)	1/30/1998 8:03:00 AM
From: qdog	Respond to of 152472

You can build it, but they necessarily won't come. Europe and the rest of the world have been straved for basic telephony services. That is UNDISPUTABLE. For the record Tero I spent 14 years of my adult life living outside the US. Don't make the mistake of telling me otherwise. When I lived in Germany and Italy, long wiat times for a POT was standad and costly. Service sucked. Europes analog service was also fragmented and not operable from country to country. The EU led by the French proposed the GSM standard, not Nokia/Ericsson. Even the words of that spellout GSM are French. As to your citing the US lagging; digital is for the most part deployed; so why haven't \Americainas rushed out and embraced it? First they have a robust wireline service. Secondly, the analog system works just fine. Tough to convince consumers here to switch from a phone (analog) that they pay one cent and a two year contract for a digital phone at $199. I can have multiply lines run to my home or business. I can go anywhere and see multiple payphones in gas station, malls, restaurants, etc. The American consumer, if you are now going to tell me are behind the times, simply isn't moving to digital for purely economical reasons. Frankly I still have a functional cellular phone that is analog that is 10 years old. Worked fine until I went CDMA. Capacity on the US analog cellular system wasn't a problem except in high traffic area's in certain sections of town. But besides, a wireline phone is readily available if one is paged. The US is neither backwards nor underdeveloped in terms of communications, period. I just upgraded and add to a digital switch that is over 10 years old. In the final process of commissioning 3000 additional ports. What is backwards about that Tero? What is underdeveloped? Note, that is a DIGITAL switch over 10 years old. I've worked in digital for 20 years now, IT'S NOT NEW. So now Europe is offering 3G at what frequency plan? 1800 Mhz. That is PCS here. The FCC hasn't issued the US WIDEBAND license for LMDS. That bandwiodth is 1100 Mhz an at 28 Ghz.

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (7755)	1/30/1998 8:04:00 AM
From: limtex	Respond to of 152472

Wow. You are sensitive. Well I guess I'd better put my name on the list for green cards to emigrate to Finland before it gets too long.

To: tero kuittinen who wrote (7755)	1/30/1998 2:02:00 PM
From: ZChazz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Tero-re your comments on "standards": I'm not sure about the definitions of "proprietary" and "open" standards. QCOM holds some Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to CDMA ONE (and possibly WCDMA)and can expect compensation in the form of license fees and royalties. But the licenses will allow multiple vendors and free competition among licencees. In that sense, it's open. If CDMA is really superior technology, and the fees are reasonable, then QCOM's "proprietary" standard may well compete successfully. I appreciate your providing an interesting and contrary viewpoint to the thread.