Post #55,136
10/6/02 1:55:21 PM
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Is the US aproach to cellular technology better?
The following [link|http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/10/GSM3G.shtml|interesting article] is courtesy of Addison Laurent.
And Christian, please save the obvious rant until you have read it. It addresses both why the US approach was bad short term, and why it is likely to be very good long term.
Capitalism in action...
Cheers,
Ben
"Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly."
- [link|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html|Walter Mead]
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Post #55,147
10/6/02 3:01:40 PM
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Damn you, Red Baron!
How did you know my immediate reaction to your subject line would be, "Of course not!"? :-)
Christian R. Conrad
Microsoft is a true reflection of Bill Gates' personality - the sleaziest, most unethical, ugliest little rat's ass the world has seen unto this time. -- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=42971|Andrew Grygus]
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Post #55,157
10/6/02 3:40:41 PM
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Call it "trained intuition" :-)
"Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly."
- [link|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html|Walter Mead]
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Post #55,206
10/6/02 9:18:18 PM
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It's "Curse You", Red Baron!
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Post #55,149
10/6/02 3:06:05 PM
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The US has an approach?
I thought it was just a bunch of carriers fighting turf wars over customers.
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #55,152
10/6/02 3:17:51 PM
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Yes, they do
The approach is based on bunch of carriers fighting turf wars over customers.
And it seems to be working. It looks like crap during the initial phases,
and people do get burned.
Seems like Linux kernel development, ehh?
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Post #55,156
10/6/02 3:39:16 PM
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Yes. It is called a "free market".
And it tends to work well over a broad range of problems.
It doesn't work for a few though.
But still where the US deviates, it often is a [link|http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1317912|bad idea].
Incidentally like a lot of good US ideas, we shamelessly stole it from someone else. This one comes from some place that can't decide whether they should be called England, Britain, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom. (Which, despite being called united, seems to be divided between the English, and people who dislike the English...) Perhaps you have heard of it? :-P
Cheers,
Ben
"Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly."
- [link|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html|Walter Mead]
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Post #55,167
10/6/02 4:27:28 PM
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OT: Haven't seen his name for a while.
Steven C. Den Beste used to hang out in c.o.o.advocacy on USENET saying what a wonderful investment Microsoft was while also talking about Qualcomm.
Old Advocates don't seem to die, but merely fade away - and reappear in another guise. :-)
(No comments on the article.)
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #55,168
10/6/02 4:34:17 PM
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actuallyy it doesnt really matter as the future doesnt care
We will be using voip over the cell bands where tcpip will carry the bits and the local phones will carry voice on top of that or video or data depending on your portable needs and bandwidth requirements that ou are willing to pay for. Now if you are a verizon customer and wish to travel to eaurope you just check out a handset that will run off of a french company and will bill back to your US number. There is the same service available for asia out of HK.
thanx,
bill
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]
qui mori didicit servire dedidicit
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Post #55,265
10/7/02 10:40:25 AM
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Yes it does matter
It does matter whether you run VoIP on 10Mb eithernet or on 1Gb, right? CDMA allows for better use of RF spectrum to transfer bits, whether voice, data or VoIP.
We have only 2 things to worry about: That things will never get back to normal, and that they already have.
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Post #55,192
10/6/02 6:52:47 PM
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European model is a victim of its own success
Europeans are more techno-conservative than the US and the chaos of non-standardisation would scare too many away. When GSM was made the standard, adoption by end users was breakneck and now almost anybody who wants a mobile 'phone has one and has little reason to change.
The European telcos problem was believing this rapid adoption could be repeated again and again. Europeans don't adopt yet another technology without likely support and use. SMS was adopted because it was a usable, connectionless alternative to voice but WAP was unworkable on a 'phone screen and keypad. Believing the success of GSM could be repeated, the telcos blindly spent fortunes on 3G licenses with an impending, general recession and without a clear roadmap of what customers would get out of it.
Despite this, I prefer the European model anyway. I would regard a planned changeover to 3G to be a small price to pay for an early, working 2G.
Microsoft antitrust violations - is it possible to be any more guilty, except using violence?
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Post #55,194
10/6/02 7:22:39 PM
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He's too nice to GSM
First off, there is place for standards. For example, I am very glad that electrical connections are standardized in the US.
But, for industries that advance, there is always a tradeoff. It'd be great if we had one standard for removable flash memory (instead of 9 versions of 5 types: CF/CF2, MMC/SD, MS/Magicgate/half size MS, SM, XD). This would bring a lot of advantages, but would limit some good improvements. For example, MMC/SD is a lot smaller than CF.
Or just imagine if we had government imposed programming languages. You know the government wouldn't pick Delphi! The US DoD experiment (Ada) wasn't too successful.
It's important to note that the GSM/CDMA wars in the US have really just started. CDMA does have the edge (Verizon, Sprint, plus some smaller carriers such as Alltel and (probably) Nextel), while GSM has three national carriers (Cingular, AT&T (upgrading from IS-136 to GSM/GPRS), and T-Mobile(Voicestream)). So to me it's not clear yet that IS-96/CDMA2000 has won in the US.
The article, along with Sprint, claims that it will be much cheaper and easier for CDMA IS-95 companies to upgrade to CDMA 1xxx (2.5G) and CDMA-2000. If this is true, then the Verizon, Sprint, etc should be able to pull ahead in the next 2-3 years by underpricing the GSM carriers and still make a profit (or less of a loss). We'll see.
One area where CDMA could be better is handsets. For example, as I look at Sprint's lineup, I wish someone had a handset with Bluetooth (other than that, I like the Samsung A500). Then I could use the cell phone wirelessly with either a PDA or laptop. On the good side, both Kyocera's and Samsung's new CDMA Palm smart phones look pretty slick.
Now onto more GSM problems:
-- there is no guarentee that you can use any SIM card with any phone. I've seen this first hand.
-- GSM isn't cost effective in lightly populated areas, since you couldn't do large GSM cells. This is a big problem in the US.
-- There aren't any dual mode (GSM/AMPS) phones to my knowledge, while dual mode CDMA phones are quite common. Again, this can be a big issue in the US, since between cities AMPS is often the only choice.
-- GSM does not work well inside buildings, either in the US or Europe (for example, Cingular doesn't work inside my office, and no GSM signal worked for >2 min inside my hotel (or restaurants) in Italy).
On the good side for CDMA, it's good to see Verizon advertising two way SMS on their new handsets, and some Sprint units can do SMS, too. More interesting for me to IM on cell phones.
It'll interesting to see how things work out. There is speculation that there will be more consolidation in the mobile phone market (life is not looking good for Ericsson, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, etc). And, 802.11b could very well become the standard for mobile wireless data.
If phone leadership does change because of success with CDMA2000 / problems with W-CDMA, I think it will shift from Europe to Asia (e.g. Korea has more 3G CDMA users than the US), although the US (Qualcom) would gain ground.
Final note: if there's more consolidation in the phone business -- and you have to be large to make any money -- that won't help MS's intention of "PC-izing" Nokia, et al out of business.
Tony
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Post #55,234
10/7/02 6:43:30 AM
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He missed the point about GSM.
And it's also the same reason why the European telcos should be moving on and not hanging on to it: it was successful because of politics (i.e. compatibility) and features, not technology. For people in GSM countries, the features in CDMA have to exceed GSM's before many people will look at it. When CDMA was launched in Australia, it was setup to replace AMPS and the phones really looked like it. Bad move. GSM's TDMA technology was a good stepping stone, but it needs to let itself become like FDMA and go into the dustbin of mobile phone history. That's where politics needs to Get Real. Just as he said.
Wade.
"Ah. One of the difficult questions."
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Post #55,267
10/7/02 10:53:59 AM
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I'm not convinced
On one hand, this fellow is crowing about an apparently nifty technological leap Qualcomm made. Cool. Can you get it in the US now? With good coverage? From multiple vendors (he also crows about how other people don't seem to be able to make this technology work well because Q is holding back info). So the technology isn't entirely open then?
I know this. I 4 years of cell phone use in the US in both Denver and the Bay Area, I had probably 70% of my calls terminate "abnormally" in areas that ought to have great coverage - like the airport, downtown SF, downtown Sausalito, downtown Denver, along major interstates in suburbs. Cell technology appears to be about as technolgically advanced as a victrola. I personally don't give a flying fuck how many people can share a signal if my calls keep dropping.
I know this much, because there is "competition" in the US cell industry, the coverage for any given phone system is much more spotty and unreliable. Thus overall quality is lower.
This is the same problem that is holding back the economical delivery of broadband to the home. Nobody will invest in *an* approach for fear that it won't be *the* approach because of some technological advance.
Its like waiting to buy your PC because the next one is going to be a little faster or better. Do you need a PC today? Then buy one today.
Undoubtedly EU will have transition pains to the next thing. When its worth it, they'll probably do it. But my guess (and hopeful expectation) is that they'll wait for a real big improvement before running off to do the next thing.
Incidentally, this guy's rant reminds me a bit of the RCA "solution" to color TV signal compatibility. Are we sure this is going to be the best idea long term? Because without the RCA "solution" TV might have gotten a better signal format a long time ago. I mean, what if one of the 802.11x peer networks takes off and simply makes central providers obsolete completely as people begin putting relay nodes on their roofs to share IP connectivity?
Just some thoughts.
I am out of the country for the duration of the Bush administration.
Please leave a message and I'll get back to you when democracy returns.
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Post #55,268
10/7/02 10:58:27 AM
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Not quite how I read it
wrt holding back.
He says Qualicom sits on standard comitee of CDMA2000, and that standard works. Europeans are trying to develop their own standard, WCDMA, and that does not work. And the reason for that is that Qualicom put its expertise into the American standard, and was not invited (?) to work on WCDMA, so they missed a lot of subtle stuff that CDMA2000 got right.
(or that's how I understood the article)
Also, who is your provider? Do they use CDMA? I've never had my calls disconnected with AT&T except when the signal strength was really marginal.
We have only 2 things to worry about: That things will never get back to normal, and that they already have.
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Post #55,281
10/7/02 12:26:51 PM
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Ditto on weird SF cell phone service.
A few weeks ago I was on the 25th floor of the Renaissance Parc 55 hotel in SF, standing by the window. I had a full-stength signal (according to the phone meter) on my Sprint PCS phone. But it would often take 3 attempts to make a call, and when I had a connection quite often I'd lose the call somewhere in the middle.
I don't have problems like this around DC - if I have a strong signal, I have no trouble with dropped or unconnected calls.
Something's mighty messed up out there in the cell phone towers/etc....
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #55,334
10/7/02 5:19:31 PM
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Yes, but it's likely Euro companies will lose leadership
as they're already far behind in "3G", based on actual deployments. Nokia may still remain top dog, but I wouldn't be surprised if Motorola and Samsung gain a lot of ground worldwide.
And, my experience here (CDMA, Bay Area) is that the only calls that drop are long calls (> 1 hour).
Tony
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Post #55,448
10/8/02 6:02:48 AM
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So who's had leadership for the last 5 years?
Not the US chaos-based arrangement.
Based on the article, yes it sounds like the 5 years of having the worst cell phone service in the world are going to perhaps pay off by now letting the US deploy the best cell phone service in the world.
But that's monday morning quarterbacking, isn't it. When the Europeans put in their system, it was the best in the world. Its still better than what you can buy in the US right now.
It might now be the best next year. Oh well. At some time the improved capability of the new service will outweigh the cost of replacing the old one.
I don't think its a bad thing to "lose leadership" anymore than its a bad thing to have last years computer (I keep buying my year-old powerbooks on ebay). It works well enough.
Lets see how well this new CDMA thing really works in the US. I'm skeptical.
For the record - I had CellularOne in Denver which was taken over by GTE in SanFrancisco. Sucked. I then bought one of this slick silver Sprint PCS phones. As far as I can tell, PCS stands for pretty crummy service. Call dropping was the norm. Then I bought an AT&T OneRate service with a Nokia phone (the really slim one everybody likes - great phone - shitty service). It was better, but would predictably crap out in my office (4th floor at 4th and Market), the grocery store parking lot (Molly Stones in Sausalito), and many points in between.
In Paris I've got an ericson phone - I've decided I like nokia lots better, but my calls aren't dropping and (I love this bit) I can replace the phone without even visiting my carrier by just popping off the back and grabbing the personality chip (looks like the little gold printed contact on a fragment of credit card) and popping it into something else. That rocks.
I am out of the country for the duration of the Bush administration.
Please leave a message and I'll get back to you when democracy returns.
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Post #55,582
10/8/02 7:40:05 PM
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Different experiences
My experience & that of my co-workers and friends here (excepting people on Cingular) has been good overall.
And dropping a SIM chip into a phone doesn't always work...if the service provider locks the phone. If you don't get the phone from the provider, then you're OK. The roaming part is nice, but I found that sometimes having 3+ signals still doesn't guarentee a good GSM call.
I'd say technologically, the GSM system was obsolete soon after it was installed, because CDMA started deployment soon after. As far as the probable loss of European wireless leadership, that might not affect you much as a user in Europe, but will affect the European economy, as would a shift to 802.11 instead of W-CDMA.
But the you've missed my main point: forced government stadardization is a very mixed bag, especially in a field with rapidly changing technology. Is it sometimes a very good thing? Clearly, yes. Not even the FCC is going to allow multiple terrestial DTV broadcast formats.
OTOH, lack of enforced standards has proven advantages for cell phones. Without the US policy, 3G in Europe (W-CDMA) would be a lot farther off.
Tony
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Post #55,672
10/9/02 2:14:20 AM
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That says it rather well.
It's just impossible to really come down on one side or the other. About the fairest thing to say is that both approaches have flaws, both have merits and both are driving the other model to greater heights.
Wade.
"Ah. One of the difficult questions."
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