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To: limtex who wrote (9111)	3/10/1998 5:23:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Limtex, yes GSM works, is all over the place, with committed [cornered being a synonym of Ericsson's position, though not Nokia's] suppliers. Yes, they have political support in some places = Europe. But you could say the same for most outgoing technologies. If Finland depends on Nokia, that might well be bad luck for them. The fact that if Nokia goes belly up it would be bad for many people in Finland doesn't guarantee success. So no worries with paragraph one. China? cdmaOne has been built there for a year and more. It is well underway though GSM has a big lead. Analog has a bigger lead. Leads don't matter in this instance. Technology and cost does. No hurry to get in. Cellphones are short life items. Unlike houses and cars. 2 years and cellphones are heading for the recycling bin. cdmaOne will be cheaper than GSM so when the battery dies, GSM handset users will upgrade to cdmaOne. On the vapourwear, the wish for an alternative doesn't mean one is possible. Physics is the defining issue here. This is not art where one can daub a different style or tail fins on a car which can be big or small or turn into a silly little ineffectual aerofoil. Photons only do so many tricks. If the trick Ericsson comes up with isn't as good as cdmaOne, they lose. Incidentally, just repeating a bit of history again, Linkabit was instrumental in the creation of TDMA back in the early 1980s. Messrs Jacobs, Viterbi and pals sold it then set out to make the really hot item, CDMA. Politics in mobile phones? Sure, politicians can keep their population in jail and stop them having good phones. The Russians tried that sort of nonsense for a few decades. Politicians can't change physics or economics - they can only stop things being as good as they can be. If Europe makes cmdaOne illegal, bad luck for them. It still won't enable them to sell GSM. Of course, they could steal from crop growers, give the money to the GSM producers, who could sell their obsolete systems for very little. But they have played that game so long in Europe that they are running out of people to rob. Check their tax rates. They can't take it from the crop growers because they are already stealing from manufacturers and workers to pay the crop growers so they can sell their standard bend cucumbers at low prices. They have just about run out of people to rob! Russia got away with it for a few decades. Europe has done it longer, but not so intensely, but they are well down the road. Margaret Thatcher called a halt - well, a slowdown - in the 1980s. Tony Blair is even continuing it, more or less. Ooops, politics...sorry Ramsey. Mqurice "In Praise of Monopolies" to follow in a few days. But briefly, Monopolies are the saviour of humanity. The innovation driver. The creator of wealth and happiness. But in a hunter gatherer community, monopoly is seen as possessor of found wealth. Humans tend still to think in hunter gatherer terms and fighting over "wealth" is still active. See Iraq. If you can nick off with somebody's wealth you do well in hunter gatherer communities. Are we really still a pack of monkeys? Well, seems so. But monkeys can't steal brains. The brains pack up and hang out in the sun - producing nothing. Good luck monkeys!! Use machetes - they are cheaper than "trials" and "antitrust laws". Move to Rwanda. I hear the climate is great.