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To: JGoren who wrote (15031)	9/15/1998 6:14:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

All, War of the Technologies; WAR OF TECHNOLOGIES America's CDMA challenges GSM IF PRINCE CHARLES'S MOBILE phone was on the digital CDMA system, would the world ever know that the heir to the British throne desperately wanted to be reincarnated as a tampon? Maybe not. Like military communications technology, CDMA -- for Code Division Multiple Access -- uses a wide bandwidth to transmit information, making it difficult to jam calls -- or listen in on them. Other mobile phone systems, including those on the analog network used by the Prince of Wales, concentrate their signals in a narrower band. Because of CDMA's "spread spectrum" approach, it is even more secure than the digital GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), the European standard adopted by cellular companies in 44 countries and territories. Or so claims Qualcomm, the U.S. firm that owns the patents to CDMA technology. Proponents also say CDMA delivers better-quality calls and longer talk time. And it can support up to 10 times more callers than analog systems and five times those on GSM. Some in Hong Kong have been won over: Hutchison Telephone has signed up more than 40,000 subscribers to the CDMA system it introduced late last year. South Korea's two mobile phone operators, KMT and Shinsegi, launched their CDMA services this year. China, Thailand and Singapore will follow in the next 12 months; Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines are negotiating to bring in CDMA next year. But mobile phone operators are not giving up on the old analog systems and GSM -- yet. About half of cell-phone subscribers in Asia are still on analog, the same proportion in the U.S. and Britain. (Analog systems directly transmit sound waves; digital networks convert sound into computer-readable signals, increasing the number of users.) GSM dominates in Europe. Japan, whose telecommunications industry is closed to outsiders, has the homegrown digital PHS (Personal Handy System). "Until equipment in commercial quantities and CDMA-based services are generally available, there will continue to be concerns about the efficacy of the technology," Linda Runyon of Merrill Lynch said in a recent report. Few CDMA handsets are being made. But Qualcomm, Motorola, Samsung and LG Group are gearing up production. Systems compatibility is not a problem, unlike the videocassette wars of the 1980s. "With Betamax and VHS, you couldn't play the tape from one system in another," says cellular communications analyst John Ledahl of market research firm Dataquest. With phones, "whatever the mobile system, you can still make a call from CDMA to someone using a GSM or PHS system." So which set of letters will rule the cellular world? PHS, which does not work as well as CDMA or GSM in fast-moving cars, is seen as a non-starter. GSM networks are cheaper to set up. "But there is no doubt that CDMA is a superior technology," says John Davidson, a telecommunications consultant with Ovum Ltd. in London. "With the backing of U.S. cellular companies and the way it is spreading in Asia, CDMA will be the predominant technology in five years." In a fast-moving field, however, that may be time enough for yet another phone system to emerge. Return to main story