Wireless Standards: What's the difference?

Well, all anyone could say for that is a big duh! Of course you're going to pick what works best for you in your area! Why would you purposely choose something that doesn't work for you? In the end it doesn't make any difference which technology you use but rather what works for you in your own personal situation. It's been repeated fifty-jillion million times that people should get the service that meets your perrsonal needs. Everyone's needs are different and conditions to make that judgment are likely always to be different since everyone doesn't live in the same place. I'd guess that over 90% of cellphone users don't have any idea what technology their wireless service uses. All they care about is that the service works and does what it's supposed to do. Arguing that CDMA is superior to GSM or GSM is superior to CDMA is a stupid fruitless argument that will never be settled nor should it.

 

+1

If one was truly superior, the others probably wouldn't last very long.


Like politics all wireless decisions are local

 

Very interesting topic!

 

Most specifically the numbers are kind of right time right place, think of it like this, if they had decided to use Code Division instead of Time Devision when they drafted GSM in europe because Qualcomm didn't have royalties established, it could have likely been the other way around.

Very True and exact, same holds true in Europe, and several areas of the country where CDMA coverage is spotty at best, it's all a matter of location and availability. I still strongly point out the fact that the end user generally isn't concerned about how it works just that it works, and normally there's no discernable difference between the two services, as far as voice communication is concerned.

 

Maybe the fact that all GSM carriers in your area run at 1900Mhz exclusively has something to do with it.

 

Can you specifically point me to the GSM specs/standards where it says that a 3-way/conference host cannot generate DTMF tones?
Thanks

 

I don't know where to find that information, but it is very simple to demonstrate that during a conference call, if the host is a GSM phone, the DTMF tones will not be sent from that phone. I don't know what causes that, but the behavior is normal of every GSM carrier I've tried and every GSM phone I've used. I don't know why it happens, but it does.

 

To the end user, there really is no difference, only preference. As far as older/newer, CDMA is technically older, but GSM was available commercially first. (the foundation of CDMA was started in 1949, all Qualcomm did was patent the IS-95 standard for commercial wireless use.) TDMA sites will be dead soon, due to evolution. It's that whole TDMA-GSM-UMTS backwards compatability conundrum.
The best thing you can do is this. Find a carrier, regardless of technology, that provides the best coverage in the places you typically make calls. International travelers will prefer GSM, domestic users might prefer CDMA. To the end user, price, features and most importantly coverage are what should matter most.

 

The only thing I will add to this excellent post is the one thing you may be able to see as a difference to the end user:

CDMA uses less battery than GSM. That said, I have carried a GSM based device as my primary for 8 years.

 

I thought it was the other way around, because the GSM phone isn't constantly transmitting/receiving data, and isn't doing all the processing to figure out which frequency to transmit/receive on ?

 

Wow you could beat the $hit out of this subject for years.

Just for facts. CDMA was originally developed for use in the Military in theory in the late 70's. The military declassified the system and Qualcomm ran with the ball. Unfortunately Qualcomm was the one to bring it to the forefront, dont get me wrong they have made leaps and bounds, but have taken an Apple computer approach to wireless. "our stuff is the best thing since peanut butter and your gonna pay or we will take our ball and go home".

I have used both technologies and can appreciate both. Both technologies are serious under estimated by each other. There are hundreds of misconceptions. GSM is not TDMA. TDMA is the foundation for GSM. Imagine a basement to a house. TDMA is the basement and GSM was built upon that. Not talked about but was actually tried in the industry was ETDMA. Heres an example of the two. Take a 2 radio TDMA Omni site. The TDMA has 2 radio capable of 6 timeslot, 1 is need by the control channel leaving 5 for voice calls. A GSM 2 radio omni site has 16 core timeslot x 2 for freq hopping and double yet again for AMR coding so that is a base of 64 timeslots minus a dedicated slot for the control channel. So if you ran no data at all you would have 63 calls versus the 5 for TDMA. At 400 k of specrtrum.

Basically what I am saying is know your stuff before you bash what you do not understand. I have played with both CDMA and GSM but I am stronger with GSM, but I appreciate both.

 

According to cellphoneinfo.com

 

The info in the quote is true. Battery usage increases when the phone is searching between analog and digital. We will be shutting down our analog in Feb 2008. The main reason is analog is not E911 compatable. I believe Alltel is only running 1 voice channel in the area we are in and we have cut back to 5. So anyone not willing to get rid of the old bag phone get ready.

 

Good one, I havent seen it dated that far back, the most I have seen was the 70's. We used a version (very barbaric compared to today) in the Army. It ran in the 88 MHZ band at 100 watts with a projected coverage of 20 miles. There was no handoffs, you had to manually re-enter the network when you were on a new tower. This system was an adaptation of Motorolas FDMA tech of the day.

As far as battery life and handling calls at lower signal claims, I am alittle sceptical. I have held calls at 1 bar or -107 db on a GSM phone for about 30 miles in Michigans upper pennisula. I have made some calls on CDMA in about the same range and is pretty impressive until the carrier the phone is on gets flooded with calls and does not have a good soft handoff candidate or the cell shrinkage factor kicks in and your dropped. A drawback to GSM it cant use multiple towers during a call, which is a definate benefit to CDMA when coverage or capacity isnt a issue.

Be cool to see a study done with similar phones like a moto v3 with out analog backup and drive thru Alltels CDMA/GSM coverage area. Take in affect style of antenna on tower and BTS output.