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To: Raymond who wrote (8535)	2/15/1998 11:08:00 AM
From: Gregg Powers	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 152472

Raymond: yours is a nice rationalization, but you seem to miss several key points. If Nordic engineering was the end-all, get-all, answer to wireless telephony, why is Ericsson faced with a transition from TDMA-based GSM to W-CDMA in the first place? Let's not endeavor to rewrite history here. QC exists because its management believed that direct sequence spread spectrum (i.e. CDMA) would offer material and measurable benefits over TDMA. QC's engineering prowess enabled the commercialization of mobile CDMA while the Ericsson camp rabidly proclaimed that the whole schema would collapse when CDMA moved from the laboratory to the real world. Quite empirically ERICY has been proven wrong and QC now holds some of the key IPR necessary to enable mobile CDMA. Within this context, it's not surprising that QC would like to get paid for the standard it created. As for the new "wide band" standard, let me be real clear. Due to CDMA's success, ERICY faces the dismal prospect of a gradual, but inevitable, erosion in its preeminent market position which was achieved through TDMA-based GSM. No realist would expect this proud and capable company to simply capitulate with a "whoops", admit defeat and blithely set about converting Europe to an IS-95 based air-interface. IMHO W-CDMA is nothing more than the public relations "twist" required to make swallowing the ultimate transition to CDMA palatable to ERICY. Problem is, ETSI has acknowledged that QC owns blocking IPR and that it expects to be paid. BTW, beyond the above, ERICY is also using W-CDMA to "muddy" the waters; attempting to slow IS-95 deployment by promising a superior iteration of CDMA at some future juncture--while, of course, in the meantime, ERICY continues to sell as much TDMA-based GSM as it can get out the door. Excellent marketing, good business, but hardly technological supremacy.