*** Is CDMA Better Than GSM - Fortune & Economist articles?

*** Will CDMA Unseat GSM as the Worldwide Standard - Fortune article?

Hi!

I think it's improbable that CDMA wins against GSM! Look at the figures: Europe is completely dominated by GSM. In the US GSM is becoming a real threat for CDMA. Only in China as a big market (besides the a lot smaller Korea), as I heard, CDMA has good chances.

If for example Vodafone, world-market-leader and 45 per cent stakeholder of Verizon Wireless, decides to build out its position in the US, and decides to introduce GSM, GSM has won the battle in the US. And this is possible if Chris Gent, CEO of Vodafone. He likes unifying very mutch and he wants GSM for every customer, I think!
He has a global vision (I personally don’t like the Vodafone red mutch), and it has been reported, that Vodafone tried to convince Verizon to jump on GSM, too. Think of the mannesmann deal in Germany, where he bought a conglomerate of businesses and sold mostly everything except mobile telecommunication, to introduce his Vodafone brand in every country in Europe. It doesn't count so mutch whether CDMA is better or cheaper. I think, it counts, what is the de facto-standard. That's my opinion.

Best wishes,
Fabian

 

*** Will CDMA Unseat GSM as the Worldwide Standard - Fortune article?

Sorry, mistake:

And this is possible if Chris Gent, STAYS ! CEO of Vodafone.

 

Maybe true ... but not always the best technology wins

A couple samples of better techonology but marketplace loosers:

- Betamax was better but lost to VHS
- Apple opsys has always been better but Microsoft won
- Concorde (the plane)

 

I agree that the best technology doesn't always win. In the case of CDMA versus GSM, I think that on paper CDMA is a better technology. CDMA has superior sound quality and from what i've seen they data capabilities are better. BUT, the technology seems to be much more sensative to high volume usage. If a lot of users on using a tower, the area shrinks a great deal creating dropped calls and dead spots. Thus, unless you are staring at a tower, your phone isn't gonna work too well. I think that the simple fact that the majority of the wireless industry is headed twords GSM makes it superior to CDMA. Do you want a phone that sounds really good almost all of the time (GSM eventually)... or do you want a phone that sounds really good half of the time and is worthless the other half (CDMA)? That's just my $.02

 

While it is true that not always the best technology wins, in the wireless industry we have to be careful when using that philosophy. In the wireless market the customer doesn't choose which technology they want to use, instead, they choose whatever companies offer to them. If every company in the US had decided to go with GSM from the beginning, we probably wouldn't be talking so much about CDMA. But Verizon's decision to go CDMA was not the end users' decision. Whoever wins this CDMA vs GSM battle really depends on how Qualcomm plays the game at winning carriers over since those are their customers. The end user, except for a handul who cares, really doesn't pay attention to what technology they use. They are only interested in using the minutes they are paying for.

 

cdma cell shrinkage can be cured by simply adding a few more towers. its benefits of spectrum management and easy 3g migration easily outweigh this disadvantage. the fact that cdma carriers can save more money on spectrum and a lot of money on upgrading to 3g data rates can reflect well on the costs passed down to the consumer in the long run.

 

The text included below are excerpts from this link. I think this continues to show that gsm for now seems to be way ahead. of course... things could change later on

http://www.infosync.no/news/newsbits/show.php?id=2478

"Only 5% of countries without GSM

...............The GSM Association ........ confirmed .................. that some 95 per cent of world?s countries have now adopted GSM mobile technology.

...........................

There are now just eight major countries around the world that have not chosen GSM. ................ "

 

I am amused at how this seems to be a neverending battle....

 

Is this dumb or....? Why didn't ATT go with CDMA, I guess they wanted it to look really advanced over Verizon when in fact Sprint and Verizon are really ahead? I know Cingular is going GSM because of T-Mobile, CA, NV, etc. I mean CDMA and the future narrowband CDMA will be cheaper to implement in the long run. Just because TDMA is a form of GSM does not mean that ATT had to go GSM. In fact it makes more sense to me to go to CDMA, since there are 800 CDMA phones actually out there, and very few GSM 800.

 

it is. kind of like politics. it is fun yet tiresome at the same time lol

 

Actually, it's the other way around: GSM is a form of TDMA.

TDMA forms are:

[*]IS-136 (Incorrectly known as TDMA)
[*]GSM
[*]iDEN

 

Actually it kind of does. The cost would be too great for att to go to cdma when they allready have tdma which is what gsm is based off of. Much Much Much cheaper for att to switch to gsm. Same thing applies to cingular when they eventually switch.

 

I am sure others will disagree because switching to GSM takes replacing basically the whole network. Same if switching to CDMA.

 

AT&T and Cingular can use the existing towers for their build up of GSM/GPRS as well as the 3G EDGE system, which saves loads of cash they would have to have spent for new masts

 

In either case, the carriers would have used the existing towers, antennae and back haul paths (T1 lines or Microwave) when deploying either GSM or CDMA. CDMA would have been cheaper of the two to implement because it would have used the carriers' (AT&T and Cingular) existing IS-41 network with only the addition of CDMA air-interface equipment at the cell sites. For GSM, as bobolito indicated, the carriers are bulding an entirely new network.

CDMA would have required less spectrum to be carved off than GSM initially (3.5 MHz vs 1.25 MHz) with the added benefit of more voice capacity and higher data rates within the initial carve-off.

 

you need to take into account that a CDMA antenna can cost 3 to 4 times as much as a GSM antenna mincreasing the cost. GSM masts have also had a much easier time (at least here in PHX) getting into harder to licesne areas(read more affluent)

 

why would a gsm mast be easier to get a permit for?

 

i wish i knew, but from my experience here and in in So. Cal the more affluent areas seem to have no issues with getting the GSM masts installed while ther is no CDMA coverage at all. which generally means the the city councils are not going to complain as much about putting an antenna in their park or so forth

 

I have a GSM phone in Canada, reception and quality of sound is terrible Motorola T 193. I know of a couple friends who havew CDMA phones and they are very happy about it. In my apartment I have to go to the window to get reception with my GSM phone while my friends will sit im my kitchen and receive excellent reception. I am convince even without any scientific evidence, CDMA is better. Europe, Afirca and a lot of third world countries have GSM, becuase it is either cheaper for these cellular providers to offer GSM

 

CDMA is definitely superior in terms of quality and data transfer than GSM. Even reception is much better with CDMA. If I look around who is carrying CDMA technology, Verizon , Sprint in the U.S, in Canada, its Bell Mobility and Telusmobility, these are the best wireless providers in their respective countries, also in Canada Bell and Telus ranked ni 1 and 2, while Verizon ranked no 1. Does it tell u something. By the way I am a Voice stream cx, hoping to switch over to Verizon in the near future

 

Sprint, best quality!? they lost 78,000 customers last quarter. most of my customers are switching from Sprint to someone else (usually GSM)

to the guy with the t193 i can guarantee you that 90% of your problem is that phone.

 

If we are going to judge carriers by the technology they use then Sprint should've been #2, right? not #4.... By the way, in Europe, wireless technology works better than in the US and they use GSM. The point is, any technology's efficiency depends largely on how well it is deployed.

 

How was Beta better than VHS?

 

it could record the same time but in better quality, and was much smaller. problem with it was Sony's restrictive licenseing which made it difficult to find a player and movies

 

Same thing happened to MiniDiscs.... Now Sony wants to make up for their mistake. But going back to the subject, I think GSM would be much better today if it had provisioned for automatic analog roaming just like CDMA and TDMA do.

 

True. Sony was way too restrictive in licensing Beta out to other manufacturers, unlike JVC. But Beta was able to add Hi-Fi earlier than VHS due to the way the audio tracks were laid out, unlike VHS which had to overlay the Hi-Fi on top of the video (at a different depth, I think). Another of Beta's big mistakes was cassettes that wouldn't hold a 2 hour movie at the best quality speed.

 

Don't really care about those technology!!!! I wanna to change my phone easily and fast....CDMA is not for me..I dun wanna call their Customer Rep. ............ehheheeh..moreover, a lot of nice phone is in GSM technology...

 

Comparing cdma to gsm is like comparing analog to digital. GSM is the World Standard. GPRS!!

 

LOL! you gotta be kidding!