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To: tero kuittinen who wrote (15790)9/30/1998 12:50:00 PM
From: ZChazz  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 152472
 
Tero-re Nokia 10 years of WCDMA R&D. I'm wondering how well directed
that R&D could have been, considering that the WCDMA "standard"
resulted from a technical compromise in January 98, and may be further modified to accommodate the converged proposals of the North American GSM Alliance and the Universal Wireless Communications Consortium
(or the unthinkable: changes for convergence with CDMA 2000!)

I appreciate your civil, challenging and contrary posts.

Chuck



To: tero kuittinen who wrote (15790)9/30/1998 1:28:00 PM
From: Gregg Powers  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 152472
 
Tero:

Morally superiority in the face of levity? Nahh.

If Nokia has all the technological prowess that you profess, why is their W-CDMA solution still in the lab while QC's IS-95 is in its second year of commercial deployment? Furthermore, why did Nokia feel the need to license IS-95 from Qualcomm in the first place? Why didn't it simply anticipate the inevitable migration to direct sequence spread spectrum and trump the IS-95 community by deploying first? Beyond wishful thinking, the logical basis for your perspective erodes quickly.

I find it extremely ironic that you suggest, on one hand, that Nokia will somehow introduce a W-CDMA handset with vastly superior power consumption characteristics while on the other hand pointing to the current Nokia CDMA handset's comparatively poor standby and talk times (Qualcomm's QCP 820 and 1920, btw, are far superior to the Nokia handset). Are you suggesting that there is some specific, fundamental design element inherent to W-CDMA that provides for a power consumption advantage over IS-95? If so, could you please specifically explain this nuance to us? Or, are you suggesting that Nokia deliberately marketed an inferior IS-95 solution so that it can "wow" the market with a W-CDMA product circa 2003? Homey don't think so.

Just because you "expect that they (Nokia) know how to build these things" does not provide any tangible evidence to support this supposition. You position is therefore again based on wishful thinking. Your argument that "CDMA phone manufacturers do not have the basic digital handset expertise and know-how Nokia has" is equally amusing. Shall we compare the performance of Nokia's CDMA handset to Qualcomm's or even Samsung's? Prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine, steam engines predominated. Metaphorically speaking, you are comparing mature steam engine technology, i.e. TDMA, to developing internal combustion technology, i.e. CDMA, and concluding that the latter is commercially mature despite its recent introduction. More confusing, you persist with this rationale despite the fact that the major steam engine manufacturers are busily trying to commercialize an internal combustion engine, i.e. W-CDMA. You don't still believe that the world is flat do you :-).

As for the quality of phones being equal to R&D, I couldn't disagree more completely. Countless huge companies have thrown billions at products that have failed miserably...IBM, DEC and Cray Research come to mine. Dollars help, but genius, management, clarity of purpose and R&D PRODUCTIVITY tend to drive product innovation. As for Nokia and Ericsson being the number one and number manufacturers of W-CDMA phones...this is an amusing contention since (a) the standard hasn't even been finalized yet and (b) nobody is selling W-CDMA product anywhere to anyone right now. So, technically, both companies are number one in a field with zero revenue!

As for *third" generation versus *second* generation, now you are trying to debate nomenclature? Ok..let's call cdmaOne "fourth generation, really great stuff"...remember everyone, cdmaOne is now renamed "fourth generation, really great stuff" so that REALLY makes it superior :-).

Finally, where is your answer to my question about operator economics? This is a pretty non-trivial question since it underlies Europe's entire push into direct sequence spread spectrum. Let's try for a fact-based reply!

Best regards,

Gregg



To: tero kuittinen who wrote (15790)9/30/1998 6:17:00 PM
From: Thomas Sprague  Respond to of 152472
 
tero,

Just having completed a phone conversation with a BEll Atlantic customer rep five mins ago, let me relay her comments to you and the rest of the gang.
"We certainly make more money with the CDMA system."
With Bell Atl and other carriers suppling most of the (subsidized) handsets to the consumers,IMHO CDMA may have a bit of an edge!

TDS