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To: Ramsey Su who wrote (11695)	6/22/1998 7:02:00 PM
From: Gregg Powers	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 152472

Ramsey: Dr. Jacobs would concur with Montefiore (@MobileOne). I think he believes that W-CDMA is largely a marketing convention designed to enable Ericsson to deliver a CDMA-based solution without eviscerating its TDMA-based GSM business in the interim. Think about it, just how many people can need (or want) full-blown wireless multimedia? I have a state-of-the-world IBM Thinkpad and the darn thing barely runs for two hours before the battery needs recharging--fire up the modem and battery life drops to under one hour. Yet Ericsson "seems" to be saying that operators worldwide will want to optimize their cellular networks to support this high data rate market over traditional mobile voice. Seems like a straw dog to me. I can readily envision a world where more and more voice minutes migrate away from wireless to wireless due to a number of obvious advantages. I think this will leave behind a wireline infrastructure that can be reconstituted and optimized around data. This makes much more sense, since data transmission requires total 100% bit-level accuracy that is fair easier to achieve over a hardwired system whereas modest artifacts in a voice environment are either imperceptible to the user or, at worst, a modest inconvenience. Best Regards, Gregg

To: Ramsey Su who wrote (11695)	6/22/1998 7:13:00 PM
From: dougjn	Respond to of 152472

Ramsey, wireline data to the home or small business is in fact going to hit some ceilings on capacity, but that may be largely besides the point. (At least on this thread, as opposed to a satellite company thread.) Very few expect land based wireless to compete with wire and cable within the next five years, at the very least. But once you get hooked on 1mbps (+/- .5mbps) speeds when wired up, you will be unhappy indeed if your wireless laptop top speed is only 1/20 or 1/50 of that. 1/2 or 1/4 you may well live with. Everyone has in mind cell phones and PalmPilot like devices delivering stock quotes, email, and yes, maybe even checking in on your favorite SI threads while en route to meetings, commuting, in boring meetings, etc. I think it is quite true that the size of the market that will pay big for this stuff is very small. But the size of the market that will pay a little, and definitely prefer one service provider over another if it provides fast snappy data service of this type is very, very large. Actually, I'm going to invent a new device. It will be the size and thickness of a current laptop 13'' screen only. Weighs less than a pound with batteries which are a series of thin jobbies which slide into the back and give 1.5 hours before recharge. (They're small and light.) No disks or CD roms. No keyboard, although like the Palm Pilot, it will be possible to pull up a touchscreen keyboard which takes up 1/3 of the bottom of the screen. This thing is designed to be a wireless Network thin client computer, hooking up to the net via its CDMA3 interface. Little touchpad mouse device at the bottom. Also has Pilot type PDA programs in firmware. Otherwise, it connects to the net and your online office and/or home PC's. That is the wireless data future. IMHO. (Also there is that smaller, and perhaps tag along, market for robust full Net connections by road warriors on their laptops. It will after all be quite some time before most hotels have good cable modem Net service, or ADSL through their creaky hotel phone switches.) Doug

To: Ramsey Su who wrote (11695)	6/22/1998 7:52:00 PM
From: JMD	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Ramsey, I was just about to answer your 3g wideband wireless speed transmission data capacity throughput applicability inquiry when that darned Gregg P. swept down and cut off my water. My response would have been more technically elegant, and certainly more detailed at the micro-circuit level, but if you can live with what was essentially a layman's interpretation, I suspect we should just move on. Techno-geeks can e-mail me privately for the full poop[TM]. On the real cutting edge, I note that IBM is going in to volume production of Silicon Germanium gizmoes which are supposed to be just the cat's pajamas for wireless applications. Big Blue says that these little guys are smaller, lighter, faster, cooler (as in temperature), and will permit carriers to customize the handsets containing them with a whole bunch of neat tricks and doo-dads. Next step is to shrink all the gizzards on to one single slice of silicon and, voila, you got your Dick Tracy wrist-watch/phone. Now, while I have taken certain liberties in the paraphrasing area from the IBM press release, the meat of the coconut is as described. It being summer vacation and all, most of my fellow M.I.T. colleagues have taken off and the Silicon Germanium expert in residence is among the missing. So, what means this? Will everybody buy Blue's ASICs and not the Mighty Q's? As long as we get royalites do we care? Can the Q grab an armfull of that SiGe stuff and stick it in their chips? Remember that my doctoral work was in the Mathematics of Discontinuous Functions, and I wouldn't know a Germanium from a geranium. It would seem, however, that with Blue sniffing in our turf, the drawbridge should be raised and the gates manned. What's the scam what am? Surfer Mike