GSM vs. CDMA: GSM Expands Lead in Americas

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.betanews.com/article/GSM_Expands_Lead_in_Americas/1157052101' target='_blank'>http://www.betanews.com/article/GSM...icas/1157052101</a><br /><br /></div><i>"GSM has taken a majority share in North America, according to data released Thursday by industry group 3G Americas. As of the end of the second quarter of 2006, GSM had added 100 million new customers over the past year to end the period with a 51 percent share. The technology's share grew 13 percent over the past year, further solidifying its lead as the top wireless technology. The group pointed to CDMA's loss of momentum in key countries like Brazil as a reason for GSM's growth, as well as increasing numbers of CDMA operators transitioning to what has become the de facto global standard."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/GSM.jpg" /><br /><br />Allow me to quote <a href="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,12308">Kris Kumar's post</a> from our sister site, Smartphone Thoughts:<br /><br /><i>As a GSM supporter, I am happy to announce this news. I would like to see more investment be made by the carriers and device manufacturers in the GSM market. Wink Wish the article had provided some numbers in terms of subscribers using GSM in the States and around the world. Does anyone know where we can find those numbers? Getting back to GSM, I like it because it is a not a proprietary system and I benefit from global roaming. But for someone else, the coast to coast coverage in the States is more important and would prefer CDMA. The thing that I don't like about GSM is the multiple bands that the handsets must support to enable global roaming; wish the device manufacturers would make Quad-band a standard on all their models.</i><br /><br />I happen to agree with every word of it. Survey time!

[whydidnt]

I agree with most of the article, but for me I'm on CDMA simply because it offers the best data options today. Cingular has been slow rolling out 3G coverage and TMobile hasn't even started. Both Verizon and Sprint offer a broad area of high speed data coverage. I've found all the carriers offer sufficient voice coverage for my needs, so the quality of data access has become the deciding factor in my mobile phone purchase decisions.

I'd prefer to go with GSM because of the choices offered in terms of handsets and flexibility of changing those. Hopefully the US GSM carriers will soon catch up with the CDMA carriers with their 3G data rollouts.

[Craig Horlacher]

I switched from CDMA to GSM because I was sick of the way Verizon (cdma) locked down and disabled features of their phones. No file transfers, no free programs downloaded from the internet!!! I'm very happy with a phone that supports usb mass storage access, the bluetooth ftp profile, etc. I use Woosh! for my email access and OperaMini for browsing. Woosh even handles image, Word doc, and PDF file attachments so I can view them on my phone! It's $25 a year but I think worth it. OperaMini is free and works great! Best browser I've seen on a phone. Goto http://www.getjar.com for these fine programs!

I'm with Cingular now for my gsm service. Cingular is slow with their umts/hsdpa rollout but I'm ready for it with a phone (lg cu500) and laptop card (Option GT Max) that support everything up through hsdpa!!! Now, if only someone would make a compact flash card that does edge/umts/hsdpa! All I have is gprs on there and it's slow which is really a pain since MiniMo is getting so good:) I may start using the dial up networking connection via bluetooth on my phone for my pocket pc's internet access.

My data service for my laptop with verizon was $80/month for unlimited. I'm getting unlimited with cinular for $60 so I'm happy about that. They're supposed to hit my area with data service upgrades (umts/hsdpa) in the Nov/Dec time frame so I'm looking forward to that.

[jutae]

Well I have both CIngular and Verizon. As far as "phone service" goes, there is no comparison. "Can you hear me now" wins everytime. My Cingular phones (SLVR and RZR) are constantly dropping calls. My only gripe with Verizon is there service plans. I like Cingular's plans..............

[whydidnt]

I switched from CDMA to GSM because I was sick of the way Verizon (cdma) locked down and disabled features of their phones. No file transfers, no free programs downloaded from the internet!!!

You make some great points and Verizon's crippling has always ticked me off - fortunately, I've always found hacks for the i730 to circumvent the cripples, but still.

However, I think we both have made decisons to accept less than we really want, just have different priorities. You accept that you can't get high-speed data access, and I accept Verizon's ill-thought out cripples and pricing.

I'd sure really like to see Cingular pick up the pace and act like the leader they claim to be in the data access space. The largest mobile operator in the country (is it the world too?, probably not) and yet they provide very limited access to 3G data? I do get a kick out of Sprint's recent ads showing with the "fast cowboy" slapping and outdrawing the "slow cowboy.

[Craig Horlacher]

However, I think we both have made decisons to accept less than we really want, just have different priorities. You accept that you can't get high-speed data access, and I accept Verizon's ill-thought out cripples and pricing.

I agree. If there was an option that gave an uncripled device that fit my needs and high speed I would go for it!

[inteller]

i dont know why everyone is saying "cingular is slow to roll out HSDPA" Its out there. just because you don't have it in the sticks doesn't mean Cingular doesn't offer it. Plenty of people in civilized areas are using it.

I had Sprint for 6 years, and their lack of respect for a long (always paid on) time customer turned me off. If you can't provide extra care to loyal long time customers, then you deserve to lose those customers.

Cingular's data plans are better. For $19.99 you get unlimited data AND 200 messages of any type (SMS, MMS).....Sprint is $15 for just data and you still have to add $5 for 300 TEXT messages (no MMS). The fact they charge you extra for "videomail" and "picturemail" is a crock.....its just an MMS.

[Craig Horlacher]

i dont know why everyone is saying "cingular is slow to roll out HSDPA" Its out there. just because you don't have it in the sticks doesn't mean Cingular doesn't offer it. Plenty of people in civilized areas are using it.

Cingular's data plans are better. For $19.99 you get unlimited data AND 200 messages of any type (SMS, MMS).....Sprint is $15 for just data and you still have to add $5 for 300 TEXT messages (no MMS). The fact they charge you extra for "videomail" and "picturemail" is a crock.....its just an MMS.
There could be some confusion here. I've got the unlimited data for my mobile phone at $20/month as you said. That's not comparible to unlimited data for a laptop card. With Cinular, this costs $60/month - $80/month if you want the wifi option which I do not use. I have the $60 for my laptop card and the $20 for my mobile phone. When I was with verizon, their data service was $80/month for unlimited (you never want anything other than unlimited on a laptop because once you go over your small limit (maybe 20MB) it's something crazy like $20/MB). That was cdma1x at the time.

I only had a low usage data plan for my phone with verizon and I'm sure they've changed now.

As far as speed of rolling it out...I think verizon has had good coverage with evdo for around a year or more. I'm pretty sure singular only started their hsdpa rollout June of 2006. They have had edge for a number of years or at least since they bough att - I was att so I had it with them first. With edge on my laptop and 5 bars I get download speeds of 25-30kilobytes per second. I'm not sure how much faster evdo is but I've heard it's faster and maybe I'm stupid for believeing that. When I had cdma1x I would only get around 15kilobytes per second. UMTS should be better than EDGE and HSDPA is capible of some crazy speeds.

Latency is an issue I wish they could improve. I use citrix for remote access at work and it suffers over the wireless but it works:)

For what it's worth I've heard sprint's evdo implementation offers higher speeds then verizon's. If anyone has any real numbers on any of this based on actual use I'd love to see them.

[whydidnt]

i dont know why everyone is saying "cingular is slow to roll out HSDPA" Its out there. just because you don't have it in the sticks doesn't mean Cingular doesn't offer it. Plenty of people in civilized areas are using it.


Just because you have access to this, doesn't mean everyone else in civilized areas does. Unless you consider Minneapolis, St. Paul (14th largest market in the US) or most all of the Los Angeles area (2nd Largerst) to be in the sticks. :ninja: As a matter of fact, Cingulars coverage map only includes 16 states! Verizon and Sprint have had coverage in most every major market for some time now so YES Cingular is slow to roll out HSDPA, UTMS, or whatever other variety of 3G you want to discuss.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people in this country that live west of Manhattan. Ghees. :?

[eagle63]

i dont know why everyone is saying "cingular is slow to roll out HSDPA" Its out there. just because you don't have it in the sticks doesn't mean Cingular doesn't offer it. Plenty of people in civilized areas are using it.

I had Sprint for 6 years, and their lack of respect for a long (always paid on) time customer turned me off. If you can't provide extra care to loyal long time customers, then you deserve to lose those customers.

Cingular's data plans are better. For $19.99 you get unlimited data AND 200 messages of any type (SMS, MMS).....Sprint is $15 for just data and you still have to add $5 for 300 TEXT messages (no MMS). The fact they charge you extra for "videomail" and "picturemail" is a crock.....its just an MMS.

Well they're at least a year behind Verizon so yes, they are late. Does Cingular even sell any UMTS phones yet? Last time I checked it was only laptop cards.

Regardless, their UMTS coverage is currently a mere fraction of Sprint and Verizon's EVDO coverage.

$20/month for unlimited data? Not exactly. (you must be on an old MediaNet plan) It's at least $35/month which I don't believe comes with text/mms.

[Cybrid]

With edge on my laptop and 5 bars I get download speeds of 25-30kilobytes per second. I'm not sure how much faster evdo is but I've heard it's faster and maybe I'm stupid for believeing that. When I had cdma1x I would only get around 15kilobytes per second. UMTS should be better than EDGE and HSDPA is capible of some crazy speeds.

Latency is an issue I wish they could improve. I use citrix for remote access at work and it suffers over the wireless but it works:)

For what it's worth I've heard sprint's evdo implementation offers higher speeds then verizon's. If anyone has any real numbers on any of this based on actual use I'd love to see them.
Here's some somewhat outdated specs (maps/coverage not current.).
http://umts-coverage.com/

From what I have heard or experienced EVDO will still beat HSDPA in speed. It remains to be seen however whether the standard will survive since the entire world is slowly going GSM. Superior tech doesn't always win over mass adoption. Shame really...All my Betamax tapes. :deadhorse:

Reason why CDMA/1x/EVDO is up and running faster than GSM/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA: UMTS requires hardware cell tower upgrades, while EVDO was a software upgrade to 1X. The GSM cell tower monkeys are still up there tinkerin' :oops:

I've done nearly 800kbps in the early days out in the 'burbs on EVDO. You can keep GSM.

[aristoBrat]

Wink Wish the article had provided some numbers in terms of subscribers using GSM in the States and around the world. Does anyone know where we can find those numbers?
http://www.gsmworld.com/news/statistics/index.shtml

[aristoBrat]

Cingular's data plans are better. For $19.99 you get unlimited data AND 200 messages of any type (SMS, MMS).....Sprint is $15 for just data and you still have to add $5 for 300 TEXT messages (no MMS). The fact they charge you extra for "videomail" and "picturemail" is a crock.....its just an MMS.
Going back to Eagle's point that it sounds like you're talking about a long-gone grandfathered plan, if I go to Cingular's site and pick a PDA phone, the cheapest I can get an unlimited data plan appears to be for $39.99/month, and that doesn't include any SMS or MMS messages (nor tethering).