Yes, but it's likely Euro companies will lose leadership

Post #55,334 by tonytib 10/7/02 5:19:31 PM Reply	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
Post #55,448 by tuberculosis 10/8/02 6:02:48 AM Reply	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.
Post #55,582 by tonytib 10/8/02 7:40:05 PM Reply	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
Post #55,672 by static 10/9/02 2:14:20 AM Reply	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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