Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: limtex who wrote (18265)	11/12/1998 12:37:00 PM
From: straight life	Respond to of 152472

Mexico's Pegaso to buy $270 equipment from Alcatel MEXICO CITY, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Mexican telecommunications company Pegaso said on Thursday it will sign an agreement later in the day to buy $270 million of digital equipment from French firm Alcatel . Pegaso said the two firms would sign the deal in the presence of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac who is on an official visit to Mexico and Central America. Pegaso aims to develop a local telephone network using code division multiple access (CDMA) wireless technology to compete with Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) , which currently has a monopoly on local service in Mexico. Pegaso's partners include Mexican media firm Grupo Televisa , U.S.-based Leap Wireless International Inc. (Nasdaq:LWIN - news), Citicorp (NYSE:CCI - news), Nissho Iwai Corp and AIG-GE Capital Latin America Infrastructure Fund.

To: limtex who wrote (18265)	11/12/1998 1:33:00 PM
From: Bux	Respond to of 152472

Limtex, the way I understand it: WirelessKnowledge (WK) will provide a data service to wireless providers who will be connected (I assume) with a high-bandwidth data cable to the WK center where all data requests will be processed. When your phone (or whatever device suits your fancy) makes a connection to your wireless provider, you will have access to e-mail, internet, or special services that WK may choose to offer. To accomplish this, data requests from your device will all be routed to WK. In effect, WK is the internet provider for many wireless providers. I imagine this will provide economy of scale (for providing data services) that will finally make mobile data economical. The possibilities are endless. WK has said they will begin with basic data services for corporations and then add to the offerings as time goes on. The QCOM phones selling now have data capability and are programmable so new features can be added to them to accommodate these new services although within a year or two I expect WK will be offering services that can only be utilized by more advanced devices. Perhaps QCOM is planning on diversifying their product line at that point. I believe in short order your device will be able to receive little bursts of data without going through a lengthy connection process that is required for a modem connection but I need to learn more about this. Again, this is my take on this, it will be very exciting to see the new developments as they are announced.

To: limtex who wrote (18265)	11/12/1998 2:05:00 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

I think the first benefit from the Microsoft/Qualcomm partnership would be to make the Q-phone Data Cable usable. The phone acts as a modem and special cable connects the bottom of the phone to the serial port of the computer. Unfortunately there is no software / operating system support for this feature so it doesn't work. Instead, you need to purchase a special $300 pcmcia modem card and cable from Qualcomm.

To: limtex who wrote (18265)	11/12/1998 4:19:00 PM
From: DaveMG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Limitex, If my understanding is correct the important thing to realize first of all is that Wireless Knowledge is only one part of the relationship that MSFT and Q are establishing. As far as I can tell the ASIC and device development work is related and informed by but not part of Wireless Knowledge. Gregg should be able to help out on this. BUX's explanation sounds more or less correct, although ISP is only a partial description of what wK will do. On the wK website there a some White Papers worth reading Here are some excerpts culled from “Analysis of Wireless Knowledge Svce”: “The Wireless Knowledge Network Operations Center (NOC) is built on Windows compatible hardware and has been designed to run MS Exchange 5.5 using a server cluster and RAID disk array. THE NOC COMPUTER BACKBONE AND SERVER BANKS CAN BE SCALED AS NEEDED, AND THE ENTIRE NOC CAN BE DUPLICATED IN OTHER REGIONS OF THE COUNTRY OR ANY PART OF THE WORLD(emphasis mine). “The NOC has been designed to be a single point of connection to provide corporations with access to multiple networks using multiple devices. The NOC can also provide other features that would not be available to a corporate system tied directly to a single network. For example, a mobile user carrying both a phone and a pager could receive a message on both devices. A user who carried a palmtop PC, a notebook, and a phone could access his or her corporate resources using the palmtop device or computer. In each case, the network would “know” the capabilities and limitations of the device in use.” “Another way to view the wK NOC is as a communications switching hub with the capability to send and receive data across multiple networks simultaneously. This is valuable when you have a fleet of users employing several different networks or using multiple devices.” “The wK service provides mobile professionals with easy access to their corporate information such as email, calendar, contacts, task lists, and unique corporate info on the corporate servers.” There's much more in the paper. Read it for yourself. This idea seems very smart. Carriers and MSFT/Q will peddle the service to corporate America. Tech support and corporate integration will be provided by wK. I believe wK will also provide content a la YHOO, MSN (gosh&^%$&^%&).The NOC will be the neural center of a network of networks. On the conf call S.Ballmer mentioned that this played right into Q's experience with Omnitracs, which might be why the lead execs are from Q and its's in San D., NOC center for G as well. I don't understand why ATT wouldn't want to do this themselves , or IBM. Perhaps they'll let wK blaze the trail. MSFT gets to demonstrate that NT is ready for mission critical apps. Another stated goal of the project is to drive wireless application and device development. IMO a lot more infrastructure is going to be required. If this is going to work your phone or CE/Simian device cannot default to the analogue network. There are things I don't understand. Sounds like everything gets routed through San D. for now, a bit cumbersome, no? Wouldn't it be desirable to have redundancy? How are corporations connected to wK? Do all ones devices use the same address? Can MSFT go off and do this with ERICY, can Q go do it with IBM? Is it necessary that corporations be using NT, Back Office etc? Dave