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Welcome to VietNet Weblog 2.5G and 3G Wireless Market OutlookWednesday, July 17 2002 @ 10:38 PM PDT Contributed by: Anonymous Views: 821 2.5G and 3G Wireless Market Outlook15th July 2002 3G News The most rapid growth of subscribers to advanced wireless networks will occur in Latin America and North America, doubling each year in some cases, according to a recent Wireless Internet Services and Networks report from Probe Research, Inc. While these networks have been met with skepticism and uncertainty from the industry in general, it is anticipated that always-on network subscribers will represent more than half of all wireless Internet users worldwide by 2006. Contrary to the statements of both critics and supporters, these growth forecasts are based not on higher speeds but on the availability of services to drive Internet usage and subscriber growth. "Despite claims Cellular 4kbps vocodersWednesday, July 17 2002 @ 10:23 PM PDT Contributed by: Anonymous Views: 884 Double Or NothingMargo McCall July 15, 2002 Wireless Week CDMA and non-CDMA carriers alike seek major capacity gains. But the way in which they will boost their networks varies. New vocoders could improve the odds. While CDMA carriers such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS expect to double their network capacity through 1XRTT upgrades, non-CDMA carriers in the United States don't plan to linger behind. They hope to rack up similar gains through new vocoder technology that carriers around the world eventually may deploy. Nextel Communications Inc. was ready to embrace 1XRTT as a means of migrating to 3G. But then Motorola Inc. came along with a 4 KB vocoder that produced the same results as 1X-at a fraction of the cost. Upgrading its iDEN network will cost Nextel far less than pursuing an entirely different technology. And so far, the half-rate vocoder-which Motorola claims will beef up capacity about 80 percent-apparently is working well. Tests are ahead of schedule and early indications show voice quality is preserved, the biggest challenge in reducing bits. "It tested as good or better than existing technology," says Nextel spokeswoman Audrey Schaeffer. AT&T Wireless and Cingular Wireless are both using adaptive multirate, or AMR, vocoder technology to tease capacity gains out of their networks as they complete their GSM overlays. "This is a smart vocoder," says Dave Williams, Cingular's vice president of strategic planning. "It switches coding schemes. It uses the coding scheme that's more efficient and uses less bits as you move toward the edge of the cell with more interference." Early tests are promising, in terms of both voice quality and capacity. "The results are very, very favorable," he says. Members of the wireless networking community have tried for years to successfully lower the vocoder bit rate without seriously affecting voice quality. Vocoders contained in handsets are responsible for converting analog voice signals coming in through the handset microphone to digital signals and back again, so the voice signal can be understood on the other end. The digital signal is compressed from 64 KB to about 12 KB by running it through speech algorithms. Until recently, forcing bit rates below that rate caused deterioration of voice quality, says Jim Gunn, an associate with the Dallas research firm Forward Concepts. Gunn says AMR should greatly help AT&T Wireless and Cingular, both of which elected to take a GSM/GPRS/EDGE migration route. "There's no question that the GSM community has been handicapped in terms of capacity," says Gunn, whose study on network capacity is targeted for release in the third quarter. "This should enable them to double the capacity on their networks." European GSM carriers reportedly are taking a wait-and-see approach. Williams says Cingular is slated to be the first carrier in the world to roll out AMR vocoders. Ericsson, Nokia and Siemens-the vendors hired to carry out Cingular's billion network upgrade-are supplying the AMR vocoders. If the technology works as well as promised, European carriers could well change their 3G migration paths from UMTS to EDGE, which most previously abandoned. "Everybody is waiting on this," Gunn says. "The decision by AT&T Wireless and Cingular is going to be the big catalyst." Just as with 1XRTT, compatible handsets are necessary to realize the capacity gains. AT&T Wireless spokesman Ritch Blasi says phones with AMR capability should be available by the end of the year. Cingular's first 850/1900 MHz GSM handset and some of its GAIT handsets, which are designed to roam between TDMA and GSM networks, will be equipped with AMR chips. Schaeffer says Nextel isn't worried about getting handsets to its customers, since millions of new phones are put into service each year, both through new customers and existing customers opting for upgrades. "It will be transparent to the customer. Nobody needs to do anything. For every two phones sold, it will be like adding one," she says. Eventually, every handset manufactured will be equipped with AMR chips. But handsets could initially be a hang-up, says Gartner analyst Bryan Prohm, because delays have become an almost expected part of rolling out significant volumes of wireless phones when technology advances. "They're really hanging their hats on the new vocoders to improve technology. It will give them room to maneuver. The question becomes, 'How quickly can you percolate this through the customer base?'" Peter Friedland, an analyst with W.R. Hambrecht & Co., agrees. "AMR will give them more bang for the buck. But realistically, it's going to take a long time to get all of those customers using GSM." Cingular, the nation's second-largest carrier, has more than 22 million customers. While nearly one-third already use the GSM network, the remainder are using TDMA. AT&T Wireless' 18 million customers all use TDMA. Blasi says the speed of the transition isn't critical because AT&T Wireless has adequate spectrum. Williams says realizing full capacity gains from AMR vocoders will take up to two years. Besides awaiting handsets with new vocoders, the carriers must install new software and circuit boards in each base station. But the real success of AMR vocoders comes down to voice quality. "The real proof of the pudding is when they put it out in the field and subscribers respond to it," says Gunn. America the TransparentTuesday, July 16 2002 @ 08:03 AM PDT Contributed by: Anonymous Views: 896
America the Transparent
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_29/c3792032.htm#B3792035 Bad as the recent accounting scandals in America have been, U.S. companies still report their profits more accurately than those in any other country, shows a study by finance professors Utpal Bhattacharya of Indiana University and Hazem Daouk of the University of Michigan, and accounting professor Michael Welker of Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. Using data from nearly 60,000 companies from 1985 to 1998, the authors ranked 34 countries on three negative criteria: WAP - any chance?Thursday, October 04 2001 @ 06:13 PM PDT Contributed by: Anonymous Views: 948 |
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