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

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (24102)	3/12/1999 8:39:00 AM
From: Jeff Vayda	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

SEND ME TO FORTALEZA-I'LL PUT THE FEAR OF GOD IN THOSE 3G GUYS telecomweb.com Okay, we've covered this ground before, but for those of you just tuning in, I'm sick to death of third-generation (3G) wireless standards, and I'd rather not have to deal with it. It isn't quite as sadly pathetic as the whole Lewinsky scandal and impeachment morass, but it's close. I'd like to just put the whole thing away and not talk about it anymore, but I have to because the industry keeps lavishing huge amounts of political capital, PR energy and deeply felt rage on the whole thing. At the moment, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil, to select air interface components for IMT-2000. The emphasis in this argument seems to have shifted slightly. Where it once seemed to be mostly about W-CDMA against cdma2000 and various U.S./European Union trade issues, now the question of how many standards there should be seems to have taken the spotlight. The reason is a rough compromise worked out by a large portion of the global wireless industry through the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD), a very informal process designed to help smooth out trade problems between the United States and Europe just like this one. TABD came out of nowhere a few weeks ago with something close to the holy grail of 3G, a compromise that attendees representing both LM Ericsson AB [ERICY] and Qualcomm Inc. [QCOM] agreed to. The TABD compromise would create a set of standards, including the TDMA-derived UWC-136 and a CDMA-derived standard with three separate modes that would be backward compatible with both GSM and CDMA. Granted, the Asians weren't represented at TABD, and the group has no binding authority, but at least it was progress. Expectations in the industry are that ITU will go along with the TABD compromise since ITU includes so many of the same entities that agreed to the deal. Except that ITU doesn't want to go along. ITU's whole mission from the beginning has been to come up with one standard, not one standard and a second standard in three parts. The compromise essentially distilled things down to the basic philosophical issue of whether the world should prefer the ease and economies of scale that come with one standard, or the competition-driven innovation you get with multiple standards. So newly installed ITU Secretary General Yoshio Utsumi is having "high-level talks" in Brazil aimed at preserving the single-standard vision. Of course when something hits ITU it's pretty hard to avoid protocols and politics, which is probably why the compromise came from the more informal TABD in the first place. So far, both camps in Fortaleza are using language vague enough to make it seem like they all want the same thing. Most recently, Utsumi issued a statement supporting "maximum commonality" among technologies. This prompted BellSouth Corp. [BLS] to issue its own statement supposedly agreeing with Utsumi, but claiming this is just what the multi-standard TABD compromise is all about. Nobody's going to get anywhere with this as long as they keep insisting that they're in total agreement while maintaining completely opposing views. I think they should just put me in charge of the whole process, and have me pick a standard. It couldn't be worse than what they're doing now, and it would be quicker. Personally, I'd be tempted to make everyone base their 3G technology on AMPS, just to give back some of that aggravation. (Listen Up! is a monthly column written by PCS Week Senior Analyst John Sullivan. Comments and suggestions can be directed to 301/340-7788, ext. 2003, or to jsullivan@phillips.com.)