TDMA/CDMA/GSM sound quality?

Heh, my ruin of a voice probably sounds the same on any technology, including AMPS and SACC (strings and coffee cans), so I just don't worry about it. One thing I did notice, and this irritates my trained ear, is that with the Verizon LG I test-drove, there wasn't any 'depth' in my speaking - i.e., it felt like I was talking on a dead line. I kept saying, "Hello? Are you there?" but it never was dropped, and the coverage strength was fine...

I guess now I know the true meaning of "Can you hear me now? Good."

 

LOL! I like that new technology SACC...hehe. But you have to be aware that the comfort white-noise that they add to prevent the effect you described differs from phone to phone and it is not so easy to hear in some phones.

 

From my experiences on my Nokia 6360 and 6385 on U.S. Cellular and hanging out with some of the engineers and whatnot I would have to say that CDMA blows away my TDMA. It is almost to the point where I hate to use my TDMA phone because of the amount of background noise and also they echo feedback noise that there is. The best thing about CDMA is that it does filter out a lot of the background noise... But hey this is just my two cents. People I have talked to about GSM say that it is as good or better than CDMA and landline quality..

 

With (CDMA) Sprint PCS, when you've got a strong clear signal, the voice quality is crystal clear.

As a whole, GSM is *probably* the best out there. You have to understand the underlying technologies too -- GSM is circuit-switched technology whereas CDMA is a packet-based technology. The Internet flowing on the TCP/IP protocol is based on data packets. Landline phone service is based on circuit-switched technology.

But there is a trade-off, those technologies based on packets are better at handling data traffic. And that is the reason why GSM carriers will have a major overhaul to upgrade to 3G to support the high-speed data traffic. GSM is not efficient at all for supporting data traffic. And what I mentioned is also the reason why there's all this discussion as to why current CDMA carriers will have an easier time upgrading to the next generation 3G voice + high-speed data traffic.

 

It all depends on the vocoder (voice encoder) used. Right now, GSM's EFR (enhanced full rate) encoder is by far the best. CDMA's 1xRTT voice is good (much better than the standard CDMA - CDMAOne - encoder), but TDMA is much harsher and less crisp than the other two. It simply doesn't encode the nuances of speech well.

Realistically, go with the company that has the best coverage in your area and realise that just because a company has more rural coverage that they may not have the best coverage in the areas that you will travel to. I would go with T-Mobile, with Cingular GSM coming in second, AT&T GSM third, Sprint PCS fourth, and Verizon fifth.

Why Sprint over Verizon? Because Verizon's phones get half the battery life of Sprint's.

 

GPRS, EDGE, 1xRTT, etc are all packet-switched technologies. Voice networks use circuit switched modes.

 

IMHO, CDMA (I've used Verizon, Sprint, Alltel) sounds better than GSM (T) and TDMA (ATT, Alltel). But then all the digital technologies are very good if the rssi is good. Amazing that people are worried about sound quality when Coverage is the Real issue with ALL wireless carriers.