Stardate 20030328.0833

(On Screen): This story is a tempest in a teapot. A congressman from the US wants to make sure that any cell phone systems put into Iraq after the war use CDMA instead of GSM. He claims it's because he doesn't want to reward Siemens (in Germany) and Alcatel (in France) at the expense of American companies, post-war. In actuality, he happens to represent a district in San Diego. (Qualcomm is located in San Diego. Funny thing about that.)

In actuality, most of his arguments don't really fly. For one thing, there are American sources for GSM equipment. For another, at this point everyone makes everything. Qualcomm makes handset chipsets which support GSM. Nokia is one of the largest makers of CDMA handsets.

It's true that if a GSM system were put into Iraq, that even if it used American-made equipment that some patent royalties would go to Europe. But I believe most of the critical patents are held by Ericsson (Sweden) and Nokia (Finland); few belong to Siemens and Alcatel.

So yes, it's silly.

And no, it isn't. This particular issue is silly, but the deeper point that is there's clearly a rising "sense of the Congress" that we're damned well not going to reward French and German companies for the political obstruction by their governments. This particular instance may not ultimately matter (especially since Iraq already has a cell system, and it would make sense to keep using whatever technology it's already got) but the larger question of who will get post-war contracts will make a big difference. And this strongly speaks against any idea that Congress will go along with letting the UN make those decisions (so that it can grant a substantial share of them to France and Germany).

If Chirac and de Villepin think that after the US does the fighting and dying, that the US will willingly give it all up to them afterwards, it's clear they've got an uphill battle of their own to fight.