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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dougjn who wrote (14889)	9/11/1998 5:37:00 PM
From: Yogi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

NTERVIEW-Qualcomm hopeful of phone standard deal By Amelia Torres BRUSSELS, Sept 11 (Reuters) - U.S. high-technology firm Qualcomm Inc QCOM.O said on Friday it hoped to reach a compromise with European rivals on a global standard for the next generation of mobile phones. But Qualcomm warned it would not license key technology unless the European camp led by Nordic manufacturers Ericsson LMEb.ST and Nokia NOKSa.HE agreed to discuss the virtues of two rival standards that would allow mobile phones to offer data services, moving video images and Internet access. Conversations were proceeding at industry and government level, Qualcomm's Vice-President for Government Affairs William Bold said, adding the CEOs of Qualcomm and Sweden's Ericsson had met in the margins of a European technology roundtable in Lisbon this week. Following on the success of European standard GSM, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in January brokered a proposal on a global standard for the third generation of mobile phones based on Qualcomm's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) system. The proposed WCDMA -- or wide band CDMA -- competes with Qualcomm's own evolutionary product called CDMA 2000. "Our argument is, let's test them and let the best standard win," Bold told Reuters in an interview. He argued that not only had Qualcomm been presented with a "fait accompli" by ETSI, but the changes made to its system by the Nordic companies reduced compatibility, degraded rather than improved performance and did not add to cost efficiency. Qualcomm had had virtually no word in the development of the proposed European standard, he said, because it was a very small player in Europe -- something it said resulted from the fact the original standard was never approved on this side of the Atlantic. "For a firm like Qualcomm it's a bit of a catch-22 situation. Our standard was never approved for the European market, therefore we have no sales, therefore we have no influence to get the (new) standard through," Bold said. Qualcomm was "still quite hopeful" it could convince ETSI, but failing this it could refuse to license the critical technology, he said. All standard proposals are submitted to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which has been coordinating the development of third generation standards, and must have cleared any patent rights by December 31 or risk being ditched. "We truly are very optimistic that despite some of the rancour that is echoed in the press that we will have an accommodation on this and it will be an accommodation free of the courts and free of the world court," he said. The United States has also forwarded several proposals to the ITU, as have Japan and South Korea. The ITU is due to make recommendations by March next year while the deadline for standards to be written and approved is the end of 1999. "Although Europe moved very quickly, we should be very clear that what they have today is a proposal that is really on the first leg of quite a journey," Bold said. The next generation of mobile phones is due to be available by 2002 and, despite the current war of words, there is a consensus that it should be a single standard that provides global coverage. The current generation uses two different, incompatible standards and networks. The European Commission earlier this year estimated the market for cellular mobile services to exceed $100 billion by 2005, with 22 million customers, growing to 300 million by 2015. Besides Qualcomm there are two other big equipment manufacturers in the United States, Motorola MOT.N and Lucent Technologies LU.N, both co-authors of CDMA 2000. Qualcomm would license its essential intellectual property only if ETSI agreed to convert WCDMA and CDMA 2000 into a single worldwide standard taking the most performant and cost-effective proposal, and if a converged standard equally accommodated the world's two existing networks -- GSM and IS-41, Bold said. REUTERS Rtr 15:53 09-11-98 Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service