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Technology Stocks : Winstar Comm. (WCII) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bernard Levy who wrote (5726)	5/5/1998 2:41:00 PM
From: Bernard Levy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12468

Here is a complement on the earlier side-comment indicating that some effort has focused on sending a return signal over ordinary coaxial cable: cedmagazine.com Before WCII bears get too excited, let me add however that the overall capacity of the return channel (which would need to be shared between all users) is rather small. Furthermore, synchronized CDMA for cable faces a constraint which is not faced by wireless CDMA: the total power is constrained, whereas it is not bounded for wireless CDMA (the only constraint is that each user should have approximately the same power). This means that as more users get added, the signal to noise ratio goes down, and the service becomes poor. Unless the return path problem is solved for coax, cable holds really little promise, except in areas which have HFC wiring. Bill Gates can exhort cable companies as much as he wants, but the infrastructure costs of converting the existing cable plant to HFC are astronomical (I read somewhere that to make the investment worthwile, 55% of all houses would need to subscribe). On the other hand in areas with an HFC plant, cable companies could wipe ou the telcos if they really try.