Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[Eric]

Arun Sarin's 3G "views"

Wcdmaone,

<< many operators now regret their decisions to stay united! The new VOD boss has expressed a similar view. >>

I'm always glad to be enlightened, particularly when it comes to Vodafone, who has contributed more to the 3GPP 3GSM WCDMA standards process than any other single carrier in the world, dating back to 3GIG days, who now enjoys more IMT-2000 Core 3G spectrum in the world, and who will soon commence operation of the largest global 3G network.

Why don't you take the time and elucidate further and enlighten us on Arun Sarin's current "view" on this.

I do hope you have taken the time to view the Nokia Press Conference webcast from the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes where Arun Sarin was Jorma Ollila's guest speaker. If you haven't you can sit back and screen it here:

http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,1522,,00.html?orig=/press/cannes

Perhaps you caught his Vodafone Group webcast a few weeks back when discussed Vodafone's 3G deployment plans he made this statement to a question posed to him related to EDGE:

<< When asked about EDGE, VOD didn't state that they were a "CDMA company", they specifically mentioned W-CDMA. >>

"With regard to EDGE, where we are today is obviously we are big GSM GPRS players, and we have a stated goal to go on to WCDMA and we are executing on that strategy wherever we have 3G spectrum, so for us that means that in most of the places where we do business we have 3G spectrum and we are moving smartly on with WCDMA. In the one or two places where we don't have 3G spectrum such as Hungary for example, might we consider putting in EDGE so we can have faster data rates? The answer is YES, but I WANT TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR. We are a WCDMA company and we are we are looking forward to this new 3G platform. EDGE, we think is a half step that is unnecessary if you have 3G spectrum." - Arun Sarin, Vodafone CEO, January 28, 2004 -

You'll have to listen to the webcast for other aspects of his views;

http://events.simplywebcast.com/vodafone_kpi_jan_2004/index.html

You would be more credible - let me rephrase that - you would perhaps be credible if you indulged in fact rather than fiction.

BTW: This statement is pure unadulterated fiction:

<< with Nokia and others offering ... a 2000 delivery of handsets >>

Perhaps while you are researching Arun's views you can find a Nokia statement in a Nokia archive or elsewhere talking about 2000 (or 2001) deliveries of 3GSM WCDMA handsets. I could save you the trouble, and guarantee you won't find one, but feel free to try anyway.

As for vendor financing, that's a great American tradition. Ask Qualcomm. Ask the folks at PCSPrimeCo or Sprint WirelessCo who made financing decisions, not technology decisions back in 1995. Ask Ericsson who was in a position to match the financing offers at those entities. Ask Motorola who backed out after the terms got simply way to risky for their taste (and they were the original inventors of the tool and brought it to Europe).

... and of course financing was on the table in Europe AFTER technology decisions were made and licenses awarded (which required technology choice be stated), not before. Capital had dried up, and there was Mototola, Lucent, and Nortel, none of which could really afford to indulge, ready to open the purse strings (which they did to the tune of over $10 Billion) to make up for the lack of R&D that they had put into 3GSM WCDMA. After they exhausted their meager resources Nokia and Ericsson stepped in and at least in some cases bagged some reasonably strategically significant deals, and at least one major mutual turkey.

But your fiction sounds good. It sounds better than saying that a CDMA2000 solution for IMT-2000 Core spectrum, one with backward compatibility to GSM that could integrate with an evolved GSM CN simply wasn't a priority, and for that reason 117 network carriers licensed for the IMT-2000 core have chosen WCDMA, and 3 have chosen CDMA2000. I'm sure, however, that one of these days we'll see a commercially live CDMA2000 network operating in 2.1 GHz. maybe we'll even see one of those GSM1x jobbies operating in 900 MHz. Have you seen an 900 MHz CDMA2000 RANs recently other than on Qualcomm slides? Do any vendors have them in their sales bag?

I look forward to your enlightenment on Arun Sarin's views.

Y'all have a great 3GSM Wcdma day,

- Eric -