Again, no offense, but I don't think they necessarily infer that GSM is the answer.

"Some Far Eastern countries use other standards, but within each of those countries there is one preferred system."

From this I can see they are suggesting one standard should be followed to help increase coverage across the board. Whether we use CDMA or GSM is immaterial to this article. As far as Cingular being better, that is true from most aspects comparing it to T-Mobile so there is no point in debating that. But better than VZW or Sprint after the Nextel merger is debatable.

Personally, I would like to see the US go straight GSM, but I am prejudice towards GSM. In the end, the article is about adopting one standard and doesn't really spec...
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The thing that make GSM stand out from CDMA is that it is the International signal. All of Europe use it and Japan us an upgrade of it. They use UMTS and W-CDMA (which is an upgrade of GSM, it has nothing to do with CDMA).

Also, with a CDMA signal you can only make 1 call per channel, whereas with GSM you can make 4.

I agree with all the relevant facts in regards to GSM vs. CDMA, the only point I was making was that the article listed here really wasn't supporting CDMA or GSM, but rather the need for the US to go to a single standard. In fact I even stated I was prejudiced towards GSM or basically that I prefer it. I think it would be wise for the US to adopt GSM as a single US cell phone standard, but the article wasn't really supporting one standard or one carrier over another, but pointing out why the US coverage is not as good as Europe and the need for one single standard. That was my point. 🙂

I fully agree with you as well. It would be completely beneficial for the US to adopt a standard and knowing that GSM is used in other countries it would be more beneficial to the US to go with GSM other than CDMA. You have the right idea! 🙂

Cool. Slower data. Horrible signal in fringe areas. Less call volume avaible per channel. Hummm...yeah. The techno countries such as the far east have warmly embraced CDMA for its far superiority over TDMA and GSM. hummm...

I don't say let there be one. I say let there be competetion so both can drive each other for newer and better technology. Competetion is a good thing...

I suppose you want government health care like Canada where you have to wait 50 years for a heart transplant and be happy with recieving subpar health care technology...sure everyone has health care. But why do so many people mortgage their houses in Canada to come to America to get life saving surgeries done? Because lack of competetion and socialistic wag...
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Just because every cell tower is GSM doesn't mean it can't be made by different people. In fact, there are multiple vendors for such things. What you are saying is that it was better when we had VHS competing with Beta or it's good that we're having this DVD+R and DVD-R BS.

That is why you have to pay extra to get a Quad band phone for International Roaming. GSM has many different Frequencies

Sure. Let the best win out. To government mandate everything is stupid and socialistic. Socialism doesn't work. Plain and simple. Competetion works. Yeah, it can create some things like DVD+ and - but hey, look at it now. You have dvd players that can play both and record both. BETA had its reasons as to why to use its technology. But VHS won out. Competition won one technology over the other. I just feel to see where government mandating certain technology over another would be acceptable...or economically feasable at this point.

ok fair enough

it was competition that lead to the elimination of BETA

but once that happened, it was ok to leave it alone. i thought you were suggesting that the gov't should do something like force BETA to come back again

W-CDMA/UMTS is a combination of GSM and CDMA
when you look at gsmworld.com and look up countries, that's what they're talking about when they say 3G phone required

currently GSM is done over a TDMA system

Do your homework before saying that CDMA only holds 1 call per channel (the correct answer is 7-10 calls per channel). I seriously doubt that Verizon Wireless would be so successful with only 1 call per channel!

springaf said:
I think its pretty clear that they beleive GSM to be the answer.

And if their premises were true, they would be correct; but they're not. Qualcomm CDMA is in use all over the world, with the significant exception of much of Europe. Korea (and perhaps Japan) has CDMA networks superior to those in the US. In fact, Qualcomm is working on (and may already have delivered) a single chipset capable of operating on CDMA, GSM, and WCDMA networks.

The author makes a good point, though: because we have five different digital cellular networks using three or four mutually incompatible air interfaces, none of them offer the coverage or performance that a single standard would.

It's difficult to arg...
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W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) is a type of 3G cellular network. W-CDMA is the technology behind UMTS (a.k.a. 3GSM) and is allied with the 2G GSM standard.

More technically, W-CDMA is a wideband spread-spectrum 3G mobile telecommunication air interface that utilizes code division multiple access (or CDMA the general multiplexing scheme, not to be confused with CDMA the standard)

GSM is the system that is used internationally. The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. GSM phones are used by over a billion people across more than 200 countries. The ubiquity of the GSM standard makes international roaming very common with "roaming agreements" between mobile phone operators. GSM differs significantly from its predecessors in that both signalling and speech channels are digital, which means that it is seen as a second generation (2G) mobile phone system. This fact has also meant that data communication was built into the system from very early on. GSM is an open standard which is currently developed by the 3GPP.

I don't see your point. The original assertion was that only GSM was used internationally, which is clearly false, as you can see at
http://cdg.org/worldwide/index.asp »

The point the writer was making, or would have been making had he had correct information, was that investment in a single network infrastructure provides better coverage and better service than we have in the USA, where the investment has been spread five ways. It doesn't really matter what technology that network uses.

GSM is more widely deployed because it was earlier deployed, not because it's technologically superior in some sense. If that were the case, wouldn't we be looking at a TDMA-based future, rather than WCDMA?

why would you spend twice as much building up a global cdma system when we already have gsm almost there?
By the way, tdma has absolutley nothing to do with cdma, so hop off the high horse. also, thats being taken by the gov.
The point is, everyone else does use gsm. cdma is used in korea and the usa, but no where else. Sure, if you're a businessman that only travels to korea and select parts of japan, that works great, otherwise no. The best option is to build off the current global standard and improve that, rather than redoing everything again. Any sharp, or slightly inteligent person could make the assumption that a global standard is necessary. And again, any slightly inteligent person would see that the same result could come f...
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Don't take this the wrong way, but unless you are an RF engineer, I really can't buy into your argument. The towers are compatible because they are on the same freq. It's the RF processing that is different and that wouldn't take as much as you thing to update to CDMA. I still think GSM is the way to go, but saying it is necessary, that may be a bit of a stretch. CDMA does have several strengths the CDMA supporters will always try and sell people on. So as a compromise, we could say GSM seems to be the best path, but CDMA could be a good option as well. I don't think we can assume that xfrosch is not intelligent because they support CDMA.

GSM also did not come first. TDMA and CDMA came before GSM. It started out with FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access). That was then devided into the TDMA and CDMA (Time and Code division multiple access)

The primary requirement for a cellular network is a way for the distributed stations to distinguish the signal from its own transmitter from the signal from other transmitters. There are two common solutions to this, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) and code division multiple access (CDMA). FDMA works by using a different frequency for each neighbouring cell. By tuning to the frequency of a chosen cell the distributed stations can avoid the signal from other neighbours. The principle of CDMA is more complex, but achieves the...
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I never said GSM was first. My point here is that unless someone is an RF engineer, we shouldn't criticize someone else's opinion and suggest they are intelligent in their opinion because we have a preference in current celluar transmission and receive standards. I have worked in RF engineering for the better part of 13 years. I figure that from and international stand point, it makes sense to follow the GSM standard, however I wouldn't suggest that it is necessarily better than CDMA. CDMA has positives to go with it as well. In fact, it has been accepted in the US RF community that CDMA is better than TDMA and FDMA for some of its capabilities. I don't personally think that if someone prefers CDMA over GSM, that it makes them any less...
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I wasnt nececerally criticizing anyone. I was just stating where they came from. I fully agree with you. To tell you the truth...I still favor the TDMA and CDMA systems. GSM still has awhile to go.

I knew you weren't, the post you were replying to was a reply to the one above it where the posters words suggested that the person he was responding to wasn't intelligent. Sorry if you thought I was criticizing your response. Yours was actually a textbook definition and history of RF communications history.

Yeah it kinda was wasnt it.

Well, I still appreciated your post. 🙂

springaf said:
cdma is used in korea and the usa, but no where else.

You forgot China and their 1.4 Billion people

springorem said:
I love your monologue

Did you want the extended version? LOL

😁 LOL