A CDMA/GSM Dual-mode Phone
The U.S. needs one more merger between wireless carriers. There have been quite a few. One merger created Cingular Wireless, which was once owned by SBC (60%) and BellSouth (40%). Another merger was between Bell Atlantic Mobile, Vodafone/Airtouch Cellular, GTE Wireless and PrimeCo. This merger created the then number one carrier---Verizon Wireless. Later Cingular (which at the time was the number two wireless carrier) purchased AT&T Wireless (which was the number three carrier). The combined entity usurped the 'nations largest wireless carrier' tag from Verizon Wireless. Some Verizon fans cried foul, perhaps forgetting that their company itself was a merger baby. In any case, the FCC allowed the merger to take place with some divestiture of ...
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Wow! That is a pretty in depth analysis. I had never given T-Mobile a thought as a suitor to Alltel, but it would seem to make sense. I have no idea on the technical difficulties of the dual mode handsets nor of the effect on the battery life but that would be a very nice combination.
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then couldnt they just turn alltels CDMA network into GSM and sell the old towers, and then not swithc over in areas where they overlap, this would allow them to make money by selling Alltel towers and putting up GSM towers.
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If T-Mobile is set on remaining straight GSM then they should simply build out the recently acquired AWS spectrum or buy out SunCom and/or Dobson. Purchasing Alltel only to convert the CDMA towers to GSM would be very expensive. I think the dual-mode option is a good one.
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I wouldn't mind a dual-mode phone. But I would be very disappointed if they just went GSM. GSM would be a step back technologically. Sure it's more popular worldwide, but it doesn't sound as clear, and the capacity isn't nearly as good. I would probably go to Sprint or VZW if T-Mobile bought out and converted everything to GSM.
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gsm sounds a heap better than cdma, cdma sounds muffled, and thats from experience, cdma is not for an audiophile, and gsm has a better codec
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When the network is built the same there is almost no difference. CDMA is more crisp/clear. While GSM has better fidelity. The thing that makes CDMA superior is the way it handles the spectrum (spreading it out) this makes it sound much better at lower signal and on the move then GSM does (all things being equal such as phone, frequency, site location, etc). I actually changed my phone settings so I am running on 13k, which is the same codec as GSM, instead of EVRC. That can help a little with the fidelity. Of course mind sounded like a land line before this but I am also an audiophile and had to get the best 🙂 But ultimately it comes down to how the tower's setup, I could have it on 13k and it would still just bump me to EVRC to save bandw...
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still GSM is better than cdma because you have sim cards so you can switch phones...i would love to buy a crappy nokia 3595 and put my sim in it when i went to the pool or something just in case!
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There are SIMS for CDMA phones. They are called R-UIM I believe. Carriers are not going to this for some reason, likely greed (aka sprint locking phones). They are really big in China.
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which is the reason why i love GSM, so much easier to swap phones(lets not get into the security issue, both gsm and cdma phones can be cut off and made useless at moments notice when someone reports their phone stolen or lost), yes CDMA phones can support R-UIM cards, but will North American CDMA carriers use them, no. those carriers have a closed business model and with BREW that makes things even worse. i love open standards, and gsm is one of them, cdma seems very proprietary to me and restrictive(thanx qualcomm)
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I don't disagree there. Although it's not hard to swap phones with CDMA, with the exception of Sprint, it usually only takes a few minutes, but things can end up not working right like texting, etc. if you get a phone from another carrier. But it is much harder then just switching sims. There is a chance that the carriers here will eventually adopt the same practice, and you could have these dual mode phones gsm and cdma with sim cards rium cards being interchangeable. I recently saw a Sprint phone that allows CDMA in the states and GSM in europe, it's made by samsung. Though I doubt Sprint or Samsung allows any sim to be put in, likely just there own which they can then charge you whatever they'd like.....
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themps said:...
I don't disagree there. Although it's not hard to swap phones with CDMA, with the exception of Sprint, it usually only takes a few minutes, but things can end up not working right like texting, etc. if you get a phone from another carrier. But it is much harder then just switching sims. There is a chance that the carriers here will eventually adopt the same practice, and you could have these dual mode phones gsm and cdma with sim cards rium cards being interchangeable. I recently saw a Sprint phone that allows CDMA in the states and GSM in europe, it's made by samsung. Though I doubt Sprint or Samsung allows any sim to be put in, likely just there own which they can then charge you whatever they'd like.....
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The thing I forgot to add, like another post I mentioned in this thread, if there were such a phone that supported both North American CDMA/GSM 855 (850)/1900 frequencies, calls between GSM & CDMA won't hand over. AT&T Wireless had that problem with the GAIT phones, that were supposed to hand over alls between TDMA & GSM networks, but never did. If a call originated on a TDMA tower, and the signal got weak, the call dropped, then would switch over to a GSM tower if it detected a strong GSM signal. But originally, GSM was still being built out, and calls may have originated on a GSM tower, then dropped the call when it detected a stronger TDMA signal. Regardless, that battle is over. But I would like the CDMA vs GSM battle to be over, bu...
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A carrier would have to operate both CDMA1x and GSM towers to make such a phone desirable. Hence, the idea of America's fourth and fifth largest carriers hooking up. A combined Alltel/T-Mobile entity would have a stake in a CDMA/GSM Dual-mode handset.
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There are a ton of factors that can cause what you experienced, I think you just ran into a network issue, it is all about how you build it out. It could be anything from the type of phone you have to the number of users on your local network.
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just how are you able to change the codec bit rate on your phone,
and when you speak of CDMA, thats just a multiplexing scheme or watever, its been around for 50 years, you are really speaking of 1xrtt, the standard that uses CDMA, CDMA is not tied to a company(qualcomm, and they didnt invent CDMA either, they improved on it, because CDMA has inherent problems such as the near-far problem), 1xrtt and evdo(CDMA2000) are just standards that use CDMA,
now GSM is improving on CDMA, like it did TDMA in the '80s, HSDPA is just the CDMA version of GSM. CDMA is superior to TDMA spectrum-wise, but GSM is not synonymous with TDMA, GSM is a standard, and the group that runs GSM makes recommendations. the GSM vs CDMA battle is over, Qualcomm's ...
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and when you speak of CDMA, thats just a multiplexing scheme or watever, its been around for 50 years, you are really speaking of 1xrtt, the standard that uses CDMA, CDMA is not tied to a company(qualcomm, and they didnt invent CDMA either, they improved on it, because CDMA has inherent problems such as the near-far problem), 1xrtt and evdo(CDMA2000) are just standards that use CDMA,
now GSM is improving on CDMA, like it did TDMA in the '80s, HSDPA is just the CDMA version of GSM. CDMA is superior to TDMA spectrum-wise, but GSM is not synonymous with TDMA, GSM is a standard, and the group that runs GSM makes recommendations. the GSM vs CDMA battle is over, Qualcomm's ...
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Jarahawk said:
If T-Mobile is set on remaining straight GSM then they should simply build out the recently acquired AWS spectrum or buy out SunCom and/or Dobson. Purchasing Alltel only to convert the CDMA towers to GSM would be very expensive. I think the dual-mode option is a good one.
The only problem though in Alltel CDMA & T-Mobile overlap areas, a dual mode phone like CDMA/GSM won't hand over between the 2 properly. I heard the GAIT phones that the old AT&T Wireless used didn't hand off between the 2 networks. If the phone was on TDMA, then the signal got weak, the call dropped as soon as the phone picked up a strong GSM signal. I could see the same thing happening if a CDMA 800(850)/1900 GSM 8...
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