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To: alburk who wrote (27077)	4/15/1999 7:26:00 AM
From: Caxton Rhodes	Respond to of 152472

INTERVIEW-Taiwan to get U.S. cell phone standard *******sorry if this was posted before. As I said, GSM is toast! By Angus Chuang TAIPEI, April 14 (Reuters) - Taiwan state-owned Chunghwa Telecommunications plans an eventual launch of U.S.-bred CDMA technology in the island's booming mobile phone sector, dominated by the European GSM standard. "There are still vast opportunities in what is already a competitive market," Chunghwa's Senior Vice President Hsieh Chun-ming told Reuters in a telephone interview. The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) standard is widely used in Asia outside of Japan, but CDMA or Code Division Multiple Access got a boost in March when U.S. officials said China agreed to allow a nationwide rollout to compete with GSM. CDMA technology, said to offer better communication at a low price, shares radio frequencies digitally and allows many users on the network simultaneously. Hsieh declined to say how much the CDMA system would cost but said it was appropriate for Taiwan's crowded telecommunications market, where Chunghwa and six private vendors launched GSM systems under major liberalisation policies in 1998. "We have undergone a half year of evaluation which revealed good prospects and maturity of CDMA in terms of technology," he said. Hsieh said U.S. research estimated global CDMA subscriptions would swell to 65 million by 2000 from 23 million in 1998. In Taiwan, about five million of the island's 22 million people have mobile phones, 90 percent of which are digital GSM, while 500,000 use earlier-generation analogue technology. Chunghwa hoped to reallocate the radio frequencies used by the analogue system when it was phased out, Hsieh said. The company has about half of the cellular market but Hsieh said there was still plenty of room to grow. "It's too early to say the market is tight. With 25 percent annual growth in the telecom market, there's nothing that looks like saturation," he said, calling his growth forecast conservative. Hsieh said he expected telecom regulators to open the CDMA market to competitive bidding and multiple vendors, meaning a rollout was unlikely before 2002. Chunghwa has not decided which system supplier to use. CDMA vendors include Qualcomm (Nasdaq:QCOM) , Lucent Technologies (Nyse:LU) and Motorola (Nyse:MOT) of the United States, Nortel Networks (Nyse:NTL.TO> The Directorate General of Telecommunications said it had set no limits on mobile phone standards, which continue to evolve. Mobile telephony is one of several sectors parliament opened to private and foreign investment and is dismantling Chunghwa's erstwhile monopoly. Taiwan set out ground rules on Tuesday for ending Chunghwa's lucrative monopoly on local and long-distance fixed-line telephone service. Quote for referenced ticker symbols: QCOM, NT, MOT, LU © 1999, Reuters