US is primed to overtake Europe and Japan as the technological leader in cell phone technology

USS Clueless ^ | 5 Oct 2002 | Steven Den Beste

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[RightWhale]

Started to read this, then realized that none of this would have any meaning by next year. Not that it means anything now. Should I get a cellphone? Or maybe just get a job with the phone company?

[sourcery]

The author makes some cogent philosophical and political points--which I think are the main relevance of the article.

[tom paine 2]

Does this mean that the FCC is actually doing the right thing for a change?

[Blood of Tyrants]

Yea, what he said.

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

YAWN..........

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

[RightWhale]

some cogent philosophical and political points

Sure, industry-wide micro-regulation will stifle progress. It's the French influence on the EU, and on eurobusiness before the EU. They will collapse from the weight of their own bureaucracy eventually and are probably past the zenith already. Europeans keep trying to emulate the American revolution and keep missing the point.

[beckett]

I read this yesterday on Den Beste's blog. Fantastically succint and penetrating analyis of the cell phone protocol wars. Like Den Beste, I well remember when a funeral dirge was being played in Europe for the stupid American companies who were letting petty competitive squabbles prevent them from "servicing their customers."

CDMA vs. GSM/TDMA is a perfect case study to prove the superiority of competitive markets over imposed "solutions" to technical complexities. It should --- and no doubt will --- be studied in business schools around the world.

Den Beste is a must read in the blogosphere. He has a seemingly unending range of interests and always presents his opinion with admirable mental discipline, rationality and cajones.

[July 4th]

We now have just as good of nationwide systems and just as much portability as the Europeans do, only our system is fundamentally better. GSM has many features which are marvelous, but they can eventually be grafted onto IS-95 and CDMA2K, because they're all implemented at high protocol levels or don't have anything to do with the RF link.

I agree that, technologically, CDMA is a superior standard. However, there are two aspects about GSM - which I absolutely love - that I think need to be implemented in some form in the US.

First, we need SMS. As the quote above states, it could be grafted onto CDMA. Well, it's about time to do it. When I'm abroad on my GSM phone, I can send a text message to anyone in the world...except for Americans. (T-Mobile customers excluded.)

Second, the SIM card/subscriber module in my belief is vastly superior to the phones issued by carriers in the US. If I like a GSM phone I see on the web, I can buy it. All I need to do is pop my SIM card in the back, and the phone is "mine." Additionally, I was travelling in Europe and my old Ericsson phone died. I was able to pop out the chip, place it in a new phone, and I was good to go. Definitely NOT that easy with the way things work in the US today. There is no "free market" for phones.

CDMA is technologically superior, but it could learn a couple of lessons from GSM.

[js1138]

Would it be rude to ask why the only calls I get where I experience low volume, breakup, cut-offs and the like are from Sprint customers? I never have problems with Cingular.

[A Navy Vet]

So...should I buy more Qualcomm or sell what I have?

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

When I'm abroad on my GSM phone, I can send a text message to anyone in the world...except for Americans. (T-Mobile customers excluded.)

And the odds are that both the MAP messaging which allows you to roam and send SMS is going through a system that I spent the last 3+ years of my life developing, testing, debugging, enhancing, supporting, etc.

I was also not aware that CDMA didn't do SMS. IS-41 certainly does, because when I wasn't working on the above... Come to think of it, I don't know anything about CDMA's application level protocols.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

And before you ask, we considered doing an IS-41 to GSM MAP converter (which in theory could have allowed you to send SMS to more of your American pals) and decided that we didn't exactly have the man power.

As a side note, I worked for a company got it start and can still make a pretty penny by building converters for all these disparate protocols.

[sourcery]

So...should I buy more Qualcomm or sell what I have?

Are you speculating or investing? What's your time horizon?

I expect a two-week rally in the S&P500 to about 850 over the next two weeks (an 8% rise), followed by a significant decline below current levels. The major trend is currently bearish--especially for tech stocks. So going long is not advisable, unless you feel you can accurately time dips and rallies over daily, weekly and monthly time scales.

The most important question to be answered when acquiring (or holding) any investment is "what is the risk of loss?" If the product of multiplying the probablity of the potential gain times the magnitude of the potential gain is not at least three times as great as the product of multiplying the probability of the potential loss times the magnitude of the potential loss, then the potential gain does not justify the risk.

Also, remember to evaluate technology separately from companies, markets and businesses. There is no guarantee that any particular company (or any company whatsoever) will make a profit on any particular technology, no matter how great it is. And there is no guarantee that the stock of a profitable company will be worth more tomorrow than it was yesterday.

[imawit]

If you investigate, I think you'll find that Hedy Lamar came up with the idea for CDMA & TDMA. She failed to take a patent on it and later sued to get rights recognized but lost and died penniless in Palm Springs.

[imawit]

ps: can't tell you how I know but CDMA & TDMA was also being worked on for secure military communications back in the 60's.

Could this be case of non-financial corporate baloney.

[sourcery]

Aren't you confusing CDMA with spread-spectrum/ultrawideband? CDMA is one of the two possible modulation architectures for spread spectrum, but the terms are not properly synonymous. I believe Mrs. Lamar invented spread spectrum, but not CDMA.

[A Navy Vet]

I'm an investor. Like most, I took a big hit when the bubble burst, but I had gotten into Qualcomm at 14. Sold a bunch of it at 160. I was asking folks how this was going to effect Qualcomm's position. Thanks for the reply.

[sourcery]

The major threat to CDMA is ultrawideband.