In practice, though, the two standards seem to confuse investors.
It made no change in the more consequential of the two standards.
Mr. Vegoda is optimistic that most people will not notice the difference between the two standards, and expects the transition to go relatively smoothly.
The Bush decision is really about politics, and the White House felt free to roll back the Clinton standard because most of the time the difference between the two standards is negligible.
Qualcomm predicts that its patented technology will be used for either CDMA2000 or W-CDMA, the two standards that have emerged as the likeliest to be adopted by carriers building networks over the next five years.
The difference between the two groups — 3.6percentt — is lower than the 5percentt requirement of the F.D.A. Arena executives, however, said only one of the two standards had to be met.
The two standards boards hope to adopt new accounting standards by June and are now seeking agreement in three areas — on accounting for financial instruments, leases and revenue recognition.
The European Commission has threatened to reject the two standards thanks to heavy lobbying by banks and insurers, especially French ones.The costs of not agreeing on these standards would be high.
Attempts to unify the two standards earlier this year came to nothing, so a bitter standards war, akin to the battle 30 years ago between the VHS and Betamax video-cassette standards, now seems inevitable.
On retreats in the mountains around Santiago, the same hills in which Mr. Castro and his rebel armies would later take refuge, the Jesuit fathers asked students to meditate on "the two standards," the battle flags carried by the armies of Christ and Satan, and ask themselves which they would choose.
Instead, both sides are digging in for a long fight.A second possible outcome is that the two standards will coexist, and dual-format players capable of handling both kinds of disc will render the standards war irrelevant as happened in the tussle over recordable DVDs.
