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To: DaveMG who wrote (1721)	4/6/1999 1:40:00 PM
From: tero kuittinen	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 34857

According to today's Financial Times China Unicom is going to invest 3 billion dollars in expanding their GSM network. And this same company still insists it can also execute a national CDMA expansion - at the same time. Dave... the executives of this particular PLA puppet company are mad as hatters. This business plan of investing simultaneously 3 billion dollars in a GSM expansion and 2,8 billion dollars in a CDMA expansion is - to use clinical phraseology - bonkers. And these are the people who are responsible for CDMA's success in China? I wouldn't count on the business savvy of totalitarian military despots under the best of circumstances - and the challenges CDMA faces in China would be formidable even for top US executives. That "40 million CDMA subs in five years" is the prediction of the company that thinks it's a smart move to spend 3 billion on both GSM and CDMA expansion - in the same cities. I think it's safe to say they are not the next Sprint. Everyone who wants to believe their predictions is free to do so. Let's see how willing investors are to pour 6 billion dollars into this scheme - Chinese banks are already recoiling from China Unicom. I'm sure you understand what achieving 10% market share in China by 2005 would mean for handset manufacturers specializing in CDMA. None of them will see one dime of profit from their Chinese sales. If you break that highly unlikely 10% between CDMA phone manufacturers, best of them would end up with 2-3% of the total Chinese handset market in 2005. Whereas the leading phone makers making both GSM and CDMA phones would end up with around 20% overall market share. It's not hard to figure out what this means for profit margins. Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson and Sony are not going to buy one single chipset from Qualcomm for their future Chinese CDMA models. That's what you get when you try to compete with your customers - the mistake Intel never made. Tero

To: DaveMG who wrote (1721)	4/6/1999 1:47:00 PM
From: Quincy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

What if... China could go 90% GSM. But, will they be happy with what they have? Will they be faced with dropped and blocked calls? That doesn't sound very useful... Which will offer cheaper calling plans? Will GSM reach 90% in China with those problems? For China to see the future, all they need to do is travel through the metropolitan areas of Europe to preview how bad it will get. Something doesn't jive with your opinion, Tero. Why would Chinese providers give multi-hundred-million contracts to Lucent for the single purpose of getting into the WTO organization? If my memory serves me correctly, China was sold on GSM with the promise of a quick follow-on of WCDMA to solve their inevitable capacity problems. Why would China invest in universal coverage of an old and inadequate standard because it was cheap only to turn around and deploy the newest, unproven, and most expensive standard(WCDMA)? All this to solve voice traffic congestion? The Chinese are buying into this knowing WCDMA involves a complete replacement of all hardware past the base station manager? Competition between standards in the US has served me very well. But, know this: CDMAOne cuts my monthly bill in half (SprintPCS) compared to the local GSM provider. Probably explains why PrimeCO and other CDMA operators are ripping consumers away from the incumbent GSM and TDMA operators in the US. Perhaps we can see the future after all... No?