Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Allowing both CDMA and GSM in North America is like allowing left and right hand drive cars simultaneously. Alec nails it. Personally, I'm ignoring CDMA (since I don't have the cash to have a boring CDMA handset, the GSM ones are so much more fun for multimedia creators like myself; I am tempted by EV-DO but again no extra money for this) ; it'll either go extinct or more likely through software all phones will run every possible standard because we are unfortunately not smart enough as a society to just choose one.

FROM Driving on the right-hand side in a left-hand wireless world. — Alec Saunders .LOG:

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The wireless infrastructure is also a commodity. The Europeans got it right when they recognized this and mandated GSM over CDMA. One or the other didn't really matter, by the way. There are technical differences between GSM and CDMA, but at the end of the day nobody except industry people and operators care. What was important was standardization because it allows the ecosystem around the rest of the technology stack to flourish. By choosing not to choose, however, regulators have allowed an artificial lock-in to occur built around networking technologies. The absurdity of the latest round of telephones with CDMA built in for North America, and GSM for the rest of the world illustrates this problem very neatly. Two standards, two sets of royalties, and lord knows how many radios results in a limited choice of handsets, and more expense for the consumer. It's as if we allowed right-hand and left-hand drive cars in North America, built separate highways for each and invited the road operators and auto manufacturers to compete. Then, because some people's houses and businesses are on one road/auto standard and others on another, the industry decided to build cars with two steering wheels that can drive on either road standard.

Consumers are best served when commodities are delivered in standard ways. And because monopolies tend to act in the best interests of shareholders rather than consumers I would argue, in disagreement with my friend Mark, that when the market reaches a point where competition is not being served, standards should be dictated.

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UPDATE: The SIM functionality (there appears to be no user replaceable SIM) appears to be controlled through the iTunes store. Very interesting. 

I am not a cellphone hardware engineer but it seems ridiculous to support EDGE and support CDMA which is what Boris is implying ("If the iPhone is, indeed, a CDMA phone, then the whole will the iPhone be locked to Cingular question is a bit moot: without SIM cards, you can't take it to another network.") but hey we could both be wrong. More likely, the iPhone is GSM and uses EDGE data and the SIM instead of being user replaceable is hardwired in the first version of the iPhone. The soap opera continues :-) !

FROM The Mossberg Solution - WSJ.com:

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But the iPhone has a major drawback: the cellphone network it uses. It only works with AT&T (formerly Cingular), won't come in models that use Verizon or Sprint and can't use the digital cards (called SIM cards) that would allow it to run on T-Mobile's network. So, the phone can be a poor choice unless you are in areas where AT&T's coverage is good. It does work overseas, but only via an AT&T roaming plan.

In addition, even when you have great AT&T coverage, the iPhone can't run on AT&T's fastest cellular data network. Instead, it uses a pokey network called EDGE, which is far slower than the fastest networks from Verizon or Sprint that power many other smart phones. And the initial iPhone model cannot be upgraded to use the faster networks.

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It would be cool if somebody actually implemented a system where we could move GSM SIMs to CDMA phones and vice versa so with one SIM or R-UIM you could use mobile phones from CDMA or GSM suppliers or networks but the odds of that happening I'd imagine are the same as the odds were of Betamax winning over VHS :-) ! [And yes I know that CDMA technology is used by 3G GSM!]

FROM Removable User Identity Module - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via email from David

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Removable User Identity Module (R-UIM), a card developed for CDMA handsets that is equivalent to the GSM SIM and 3G USIM except that it is capable of working in both CDMA and GSM phones and networks. It is physically compatible with GSM SIMs and can fit into existing GSM phones as it is an extension of the GSM 11.11 standard

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EMAIL FROM David:

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It seems that not only are R-UIMs the equivalent to SIMs, according to the Wikipedia article they're actually compatible with SIMs and can be placed into GSM phones:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removable_User_Identity_Module

It can actually store provisioning information for both types of networks:

http://www.china.org.cn/english/BAT/109251.htm
http://www.cdmatech.com/products/ruim.jsp

Technically, the R-UIM is basically kind of like of an extension of a SIM card that is defined in the "GSM 11.11" standard:

http://www.ttfn.net/techno/smartcards/gsm11-11.pdf
http://www.3gpp2.org/Public_html/specs/CS0023-0.pdf

Perhaps the CRTC should simply say that all providers in Canada (regardless of the underlying network) must use R-UIMs?

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Hmmm. Provocative. I am not a big fan of CDMA but I doubt this will happen! Check back in 2011!

From Why CDMA will die!
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I believe that by 2011 (in another five years) the market share of CDMA family in the world will be less than 2%. There are many analysts out there who do predict that CDMA market (CDMA, CDMA2000, etc) will shrink but their estimates are quite generous. Currently, the market share of CDMA family in the world is around 18% but is dwindling gradually (while GSM family currently holds 81% of the market). I believe that this decreasing rate will soon pick up pace to shrink quite drastically in an exponential fashion leading to its ultimate demise.

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Laugh out loud. Slogan des Tages! Go GSM go!

FROM Telecom Trends: Technology versus Service:

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He said that TELUS has been playing catchup with Rogers in some areas of wireless applications because of Rogers' use of GSM and the greater number of applications that exist for that platform. He noted the earlier availability of RIM Blackberry as an example.

We can argue about whether or not CDMA may be a better network technology, but what is clear is that consumers are more concerned about what they can do with the technology - not the inner workings themselves.

Look at Betamax as a great example.

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