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To: Caxton Rhodes who wrote (25652)3/31/1999 1:26:00 PM
From: 2brasil  Respond to of 152472
 
INTERVIEW-China Unicom to buy CDMA system

By Matt Pottinger

SHANGHAI, March 31 (Reuters) - Chinese telecommunication firm, China Unicom, will
buy a five million subscriber mobile phone network from mainly U.S. companies later this
year, a member of the company's board of directors said on Wednesday.

''We will roll out phase one of CDMA systems this fall,'' Liu Zhenyuan, director and chief
Shanghai representative of the small state-owned telecom firm, told Reuters.

In a sudden shift, China has signalled it will allow Chinese telecommunications firms to build CDMA (Code Division Multiple
Access) networks, industry players said.

The U.S.-developed technology is now limited to trials in four cities while the rest of China operates on the European GSM
standard.

China's market for mobile network equipment and handsets, worth billions of dollars a year, has been dominated by GSM
(Global System for Mobile Communications) technology from Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson .

An agreement on the new network would be formally announced during Premier Zhu Rongji's visit to the United States next
week, Liu said.

It was still undecided which companies would be selected to build it, he said.

''We will decide that based upon bids for the best price and the best technology,'' he said.

Liu said he was not sure of the exact value of the contract, but he said it could be worth hundreds of million of dollars to U.S.
vendors of CDMA networks.

Industry analysts said Motorola (NYSE:MOT - news), Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU - news) and Canada's Nortel were in
negotiations with China Unicom.

Ericsson, which acquired the CDMA equipment division of San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc (Nasdaq:QCOM - news) last
week, was also in talks, the analysts said.

Zhu is set to visit the United States next week and many industry analysts had expected an announcement on CDMA after
Chinese companies had expressed strong and sudden interest in buying CDMA networks.

Zhu has backed CDMA as part of his efforts to spur competition in an industry dominated by state-owned China Telecom.

Liu declined to give specifics on the geographical reach of the new system, but said Shanghai would be a ''focus point.''

He said it would take a year to build a network to a five million subscriber capacity, but made no guarantee that the system
would attract that many subscribers.

''That depends on how much interest customers have in CDMA,'' he said.

Lucent is expected to sign a smaller deal on Thursday with the Great Wall company to triple its CDMA trial network in the
southern city of Guangzhou, a source familiar with the deal said.

More Quotes
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Lucent Technologies Inc (NYSE:LU - news)
Motorola Inc (NYSE:MOT - news)
Qualcomm Inc (Nasdaq:QCOM - news)
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To: Caxton Rhodes who wrote (25652)3/31/1999 2:00:00 PM
From: DWB  Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 152472
 
Isn't it amazing how perceptions change in a very short span of time? Back in January, if QCOM had been up $5-$7 in a day, we'd all have been shouting from the rooftops at the 10%+ gain. Now, a few months down the road, similar increases only create 1/2 that percentage gain, and are acknowledged as status quo.

As someone who bought in around $50, you gotta love days that come and go with 10% rises in your initial investment, under good to heavy volume. The question is, when does it stop, and what happens then?

DWB