From: stephen@sprunk.org

On 22-Apr-15 09:16, John Levine wrote:
>>> It's just like the stupidity of our CDMA/TDMA/iDEN war while the
>>> world standardized on GSM.  Despite its flaws, GSM is far
>>> superior to all of the US-developed systems _and_ costs less due
>>> to economy of scale, which is why all US carriers are finally
>>> moving that way.
>>
>> Oh, c'mon, GSM came later. And it was mostly Europe that decided to
>> use an international standards-making process because of the
>> relatively small countries; I don't recall any other part of the
>> world being involved.
>
> Quite right.  It was developed by ETSI, where E stands for European.

It was developed by CEPT and later transferred to ETSI.

> It's a brilliant implementation of mediocre TDMA technology.
> Putting the phone's identity in the SIM wasn't a new idea but they
> made it work.

GSM isn't particularly clever; the point was that everyone (except the
US) quickly standardized on GSM, so they got economy of scale, and for
commercialization, that's usually more important than cleverness.

ETSI standards often get used elsewhere simply because the rest of the
world (except the US) doesn't see the point in developing competing
standards.  GSM, for instance, was deployed in Australia in 1993, not
long after Europe's first GSM network went live in 1991.

>> I have no idea why you would state it's superior. As it happens,
>> I'm a T-Mobile subscriber (using an AT&T cell phone), but sound
>> quality isn't all that brilliant and I lose coverage plenty of
>> times when indoors.
>
> That has everything to do with frequencies.  AT&T (GSM) and Verizon
> (CDMA) are mostly at 800MHz, while T-Mo (GSM) and Sprint (CDMA) are
> at 1900 MHz.

All the carriers have space in both blocks in various places around the
country, due to the rather messy spectrum auction process and M&A
activity over the years.

The main exception is Sprint's (former Nextel's) iDEN, which uses a
different frequency band entirely and competes with other services.

> The 800 MHz carriers have much better coverage because 800
> propagates better than 1900.

For cellular networks, that's not necessarily a good thing.  Ideally,
you'd use 1800/1900 for small, urban cells and 800/900 for umbrella or
rural cells.  But that's not how FCC spectrum auctions work.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

--- SoupGate/W32 v1.03
 * Origin: LiveWire BBS -=*=- UseNet FTN Gateway (1:2320/1)