To: Uncle Frank who wrote (25455 ) 3/29/1999 2:10:00 AM From: John Stichnoth Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 152472
Frank--Here's the place to start:cdg.org I'm not one of the (many) technical wizards on this thread, but I'll try a couple of points--which the wizards can correct if needed. 1. Cdma was developed in response to limitations of analog wireless, and not as a later generation of tdma or gsm. They were different evolutionary paths, if you will, that are not very compatible. 2. Cdma's selling point early on, and still, was its ability to avoid dropped calls. If you've ever been on a call while driving along, and lost the call you were on, you know how important that is to the user. One of the major reasons for the dropped calls was the "handoff" between cells. The phone gets confused as to who it should be listening to (ie., which cell's basestation), and reacts by hanging up! Cdma addresses that issue very strongly with its method of Soft-handoff between base stations. QCOM has a number of very important patents in this area, which will provide very important revenues from royalties. 3. Capacity of cdma over tdma or gsm is not at present a major selling point. However, cdma's capacity over analog has long been a selling point. It is all of the digital standards' ability to handle so many more phone calls out of the same basestation box that is driving the wireless providers to move to digital. Their buildout costs are lower by some order of magnitude. 4. cdma is clearer than tdma, gsm or analog. (I personally feel this a minor point, because analog and tdma are pretty much as good as the wire calls we're all used to, but see 5). 5. cdma--and especially the next generation that everyone is so excited about--promises to be the best solution in the near term to reliable broadband data transfer over the wireless network. (It's important to note that mention has already been made of a 4th generation, which seeks to address both the data capacity issues and the number of users that can be handled out of a single basestation at a time--which Q is working on. Variants of CDMA have been experimented with on these issues that show promise). 6. QCOM is right in the center of cdma development. They invented it. They are (maybe--the accuracy of this point has been batted about in the last couple of days here) the only company producing ASICS in quantity for all of the handset manufacturers and basestation providers. ASICS are at the center of the technology. Without them you can't make anything work. Q has the best handle of the many technical difficulties involved in making the technology work. They have made it work in the face of industrywide scepticism. The sceptics included, famously, Ericcson--which just capitulated and invested high 9 figures (numbers from $500 million to $1 billion have been bandied about, even though none of us has seen the contract) to purchase QCOM's infrastructure business. The other famous sceptic is ATT, which is now increasingly isolated by its reliance on tdma thoughout its US network. 7. Q isn't just a one-hit wonder. They've got important businesses that provide significant revenue streams (Omnitracs and Globalstar), and very promising positions in future developments (including high definition digital TV, and Cinecomm--which may become the standard distribution method of films from studios to movie houses; the new Star Wars movie will be "distributed" by Cinecomm as a showcase, this summer). Hope this helps. Best, JS