CDMA vs GSM

Categories: Technology
Comments: Comments Off on CDMA vs GSM
Published on: January 19, 2005

I got in my email today a copy of a story about a lawsuit filed against verizon (I will not be posting it here, if you look around it was posted on the wall street journal and titled “Cellphone Users Sue, Saying Carrier Cut Phone’s Features” and was writen by CHRISTOPHER RHOADS) But what I will post below is my reaction and my thoughts of CDMA vs GSM click the readmore link to read my thoughts:


This just shows how the companies that use CDMA believe that they have to have complete control of their customer’s choices; the problem with the complete control is that they fail to give the customers what they want. This just angers the customers and makes them what to ditch that company for another one.

This is one of the reasons I am happy I dumped the CDMA ones (sprint and Verizon, I had sprint untill the wireless portability number law came into effect in Nov of 2003) and went with a GSM on (T-mobile & Cingular)

GSM is a more mature technology, and it is a free technology, instead of having to want till my provider decided to support a phone I can have that phone, the account is tracked on a removable “sim” chip that stores all the needed information, from the information about the account for the towers, to the address book. I can pop in an Cingular sim card and my phone would have a different number because of the sim card, or if my phone breaks I can just get a new one, that new one will work as soon as I put the sim card in, no calling to get the phone activated, and no 1 hour want for it to get going, it up and running, just a better more mature technology that puts more power in the customers hand.

Also another reason for CDMA companies disable the internet abilities is because at the tower level the tower does not know if an incoming stream is data or voice, so how do they know which to give priority to. While on the other hand GSM which is a packet switching technology (the same technology the internet is built on) the towers can tell the different, and also if there is a high demand time, the tower can just drop a few packets of the data ones here and there, netting to only a slower internet connection for the user, the technology is built around the possibility of packet loss, so the phone and the users device has no problem with a few packets not going though the first time, the device will just try again, and all is good.
Also some other good things about GSM is it has an easer time of jumping from tower to tower then CDMA and if you loss connection with a tower for a short time, CDMA will die and call is disconnected, GSM will try to establish connectivity for about 2 seconds, all the user will hear is a bit of silence then the voice on the other end will just come back if connectivity can be obtained again, over all GSM (T-Mobil and Cingular) is a far more advance technology then CDMA (Verizon and Sprint)

And for the record I have T-Mobile now. I would like to wish those bringing the suit against Verizon the best of luck.

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