Chinese clamor for low cost wireless phones

China is the only country where the personal access systems are popular. These systems consists of low powered handsets with a range of just a few miles that link to base stations in the user's home, which are connected to wireline networks belonging to China Telecom (CHA) and China Netcom.

It costs about 1.5 c/min compared with 5 c/min for celular and it is an adequate alternative for the vast underclass of China and other Asian countries such as Vietnam and India.

UTStarcom has had a fenomenal growth rate and has 70% of the handset market. Gfk Asia research firm says that about 21 million personal access-system phones will be sold in China this year and double that by end of 2004.

The company also sells specialized switches used by phone carriers to deliver high-speed Internet service to customers, having the leading DSL supplier in Japan, Yahoo Broadband, as its customer.

UTStarcom should profit well even with the increased competition offered by other companies such as ZTE Corp, China Putian (IPO soon), Huawei Technologies (IPO soon) and the cellular providers China Mobile (CHL) and China Unicom (CHU).

UTSI $37.88 on 11/29/2003	CHA $32.23 on 11/29/2003
CHL $14.61 on 11/29/2003	CHU $9.59 on 11/29/2003