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Technology Stocks : Data Race (NASDAQ: RACE) NEWS! 2 voice/data/fax: ONE LINE! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PammyLee who wrote (30930)	2/15/1999 5:57:00 PM
From: Marshall	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 33268

Yes - very interesting post and I think he's captured most of it. On another topic it looks like we're finally going to get a decent data rate connection on cellular in time but it's all still in trials and looks like it will be rather costly: Telia Trials "Limited" Mobile Data Option By Joanne Taaffe at CommunicationsWeek International 15 February 1999 Swedish operator Telia AB has joined operators in Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong and Norway in trials of high-speed circuit switched data (HSCSD) technology in an effort to tap into what it sees as the unexploited market for data access over mobile phones. Telia, which will initially test HSCSD equipment from Stockholm-based L.M. Ericsson AB in its laboratories before unleashing it on the market early next year if it proves viable, views the technology as an intermediary step toward 3G wireless technology, said Jan Karmakar, head of network development at Telia Mobile. Telia sees HSCSD as a means to whet customers' interest in data applications over mobile phones and will aim it at "business people with an interest in the latest technology," Karmakar said. HSCSD works by combining the carrying capacity of four GSM channels. Ericsson's system drives each channel at 9.6 kilobits per second, giving an aggregated 38-Kbps channel. Nokia, by contrast, claims to offer 57.6 Kbps by driving each channel at 14.4 Kbps. But despite the proliferation of trials, analysts believe that HSCSD's appeal will remain geographically limited to the sophisticated and competitive mobile markets of Scandinavia and a few Asian countries, including Singapore and Hong Kong. Data makes up more than 10% of Scandanavian mobile traffic, "so they have need for HSCSD while waiting for GPRS ." However, in the rest of Europe data makes up an average of between 3% and 6% of traffic, said Giulia Rancati, a London-based analyst at International Data Corp., which explains why "most of continental Europe doesn't have plans for HSCSD," she added. More general adoption of HSCSD will likely be limited by the anticipated arrival later this year of GPRS, which is promising data transmission speeds of nearly 150 Kbps. Both Rancati and Paul Donegan, an analyst with the Yankee Group Europe, of Watford, England, believe that the rest of Europe will skip HSCSD and wait for the arrival of GPRS. It is a view shared by some equipment manufacturers, including Brampton, Canada-based Nortel Networks, which is spurning the manufacture of HSCSD equipment to focus on GPRS. But even GPRS may have a fairly limited life-span, with the cumbersomely named Enhanced Data Rates for the GSM Evolution (EDGE) technology waiting in the wings. Nonetheless, Telia's Karmakar believes HSCSD will have a niche even when GPRS arrives. Although the latter offers faster data delivery, HSCSD wins when it comes to running the kind of video applications Telia has in mind for the business mobile phone market, said Karmakar. HSCSD's circuit switched network technology offers guaranteed bit rates and relatively low latency, when compared with GPRS's packet switched architecture, he said. But Rancati believes Telia's hopes of providing video over HSCSD are unrealistic. "It will still be too slow. To have good video applications we will have to wait for third generation." And even though HSCSD only requires relatively simple software upgrades on existing GSM networks, as opposed to the software and hardware upgrades needed for GPRS, its use of four GSM channels makes it "spectrum hungry," and therefore "difficult to price attractively," said Donegan. Customers will have to use new handsets, further adding to the cost - and the risk. If vendors miss the delivery date for new handsets, as they did with dual-band handsets, then customers will have moved closer to taking up GPRS and 3G technologies, said Rancati. totaltele.com