Mobile phone sim cards in the US

[Dinner]

It's like VHS vs BetaMAX. A locked phone is like a VHS VCR which will only play movies sold by Sony. Unlocking it will let you use all VHS tapes no matter who made the movie but you still can't play BetaMAX tapes.

Got it?

[Pekka]

Wow Oerdin, you were able to make a simple thign sound like a complicated one

DanS! I already explained the same key issues in those few lines of post I gave. Please, ask more if you need information. Cell phones and mobile technology is my domain .

Oerdin and you are damned to hell!

[Jon Miller]

I use to do Hybrid (GSM plus the old 'standard') but GSM is so common that when I got a new phone 1.5 years ago, I just went with GSM.

The few locations I don't get service I don't think I would get service with anything else either.

JM

[Pekka]

"An unlocked GSM phone will never work on a CDMA or cell network unless it is a multiband phone and the same goes for the other two. "

Yeah, except most phones are multiband these days and has been for the last.. years?

[Pekka]

hybrids, all this confusion about standards and roaming in the networks, guys, your providers are really banging you in the anus.

You have so complex deals it would make anyone dizzy!!!

DanS, most reasonable phones can support all your needs, GSM, CDMA and all that jazz. If you want to buy a phone that supports only one of these, well, it's just like buying yes, an old betamax system.

There is no problem, just get a phone that is modern enough to be in this century, so it will support all your standard needs. Period.

And if you provider or someone else here tries to engage in GSM vs CDMA, and claim the benefits of the other are far better in the other, is a fool who does not know what he's talking about and is simply a repeater of their campagn material. In extremely dense populated areas you might want to go with CDMA, but this does not mean you should choose between these when buying a phone.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Pekka
Yeah, except most phones are multiband these days and has been for the last.. years?

There a very few phones that work with both GSM and CDMA, which is what Oerdin probably meant.

[Pekka]

Well it's not my problem you guys are draconian when it comes to basic consumer technology.

Get one that supports both. If you have to choose, choose GSM. But then again, you are dealing with Motorola. Well it's like the Sony of the console world, you get ****. Behind everything, claiming to be on top

[LordShiva]

In the US they need to worry about iDen, too.

[Dinner]

The EU uses GSM mainly because the French are protectionist S.O.B.s, the French have lots of influence on the EU, so the French forced the EU to adopt the technology of a french company as the EU legal standard. Originally, the EU made it so that ONLY GSM could be used in the EU for the new generation of phones but Qualcomm and other companies (mostly American and Asian) sued and eventually the EU changed its laws. Not before GSM had become the defacto standard in Europe though.

In The Americas and Asia CDMA has done very well. Dispit Pekka's claims from a purely technical and engineering standpoint CDMA is better then GSM because you can get more calls through a single switch, better compression of data, and a slightly clearer signal. It is slightly more expensive though in no small part due to the fact that the EU's early mandate meant GSM got adopted in mass in Europe and so there is a larger installed GSM base then CDMA base. Still, in Asia and Latin America CDMA has been doing very well.

The differences aren't huge but they are there.

[Pekka]

"Dispit Pekka's claims from a purely technical and engineering standpoint CDMA is better then GSM because you can get more calls through a single switch, better compression of data, and a slightly clearer signal. "

Sure sure. And there are lots of cons. Whereas GSM has also lots of pros and cons.

You wanna go to battle?

The EU also uses GSM because it's a reliable standard. Be warned, this is a subject that I am very familiar with.

[Pekka]

Basically I'm saying, with the pros and cons of the both, neither is superior to the other.

It is also a super ridiculous claim that CDMA is much superior, and EU ****ed it up by supporting GSM. The pros and cons cancel each other out effectively.

You can't even say right now that the future will be better for the other in terms of technology. This is a false statement at this moment.

But... if you need to decide between the two, take the one that has better coverage on YOUR region. This might vary. So find out what has better coverage if you must choose.

The market will end up deciding which one will prevail, however, it is not an issue that is settled today or tomorrow, and there will be no way that 'the better will win' as far as the opportuntieis goes, they are so equal, that making a strong statement for the other is simply impossible, unless you are supported by the other.

[Dinner]

From a technical standpoint CDMA is superior though it is superior for reasons which a carrier would care and not a costumer.

The Major Carrier Technologies

By now, you’ve probably heard all of the acronyms in the alphabet soup of carrier technologies. The two major terms that pertain to cellular phone communication that you’re likely to run into are GSM and CDMA, the two major technologies service providers use to carry voice signals across the network. But what are they and why do they matter? Well, for starters, let’s define the terms.

GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). GSM is the “branded” term referring to a particular use of TDMA (Time-Division Multiple Access) technology. GSM is the dominant technology used around the globe and is available in more than 100 countries. It is the standard for communication for most of Asia and Europe. GSM operates on four separate frequencies: You’ll find the 900MHz and 1,800MHz bands in Europe and Asia and the 850MHz and 1,900MHz (sometimes referred to as 1.9GHz) bands in North America and Latin America. GSM allows for eight simultaneous calls on the same radio frequency and uses “narrowband” TDMA, the technology that enables digital transmissions between a mobile phone and a base station. With TDMA the frequency band is divided into multiple channels which are then stacked together into a single stream, hence the term narrowband. This technology allows several callers to share the same channel at the same time.

CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). CDMA takes an entirely different approach from GSM/TDMA. CDMA spreads data out over the channel after the channel is digitized. Multiple calls can then be overlaid on top of one another across the entire channel, with each assigned its own “sequence code” to keep the signal distinct. CDMA offers more efficient use of an analog transmission because it allows greater frequency reuse, as well as increasing battery life, improving the rate of dropped calls, and offering far greater security than GSM/TDMA. For this reason CDMA has strong support from experts who favor widespread development of CDMA networks across the globe. Currently, you will find CDMA mostly in the United States, Canada, and North and South Korea. (As an interesting aside, CDMA was actually invented for the military during World War II for field communications.)

another major advantage is that as part of the licencing agreement with Qualcomm (the company which created Digital CDMA) analog (old fashioned cell phone service) is bundled with CDMA so that the likelihood of getting service coverage in rural or suburban areas is much higher. Most GSM phones sold in the US are still single band though multiband phones can be bought abet for an expensive price. Every CDMA phone has this ability build in.

If you are traveling in the 1st world that won't matter but if you are traveling some where else or even in rural areas of the 1st world then that can matter.

A few choice quotes:

Most CDMA cell phones include analog capability (also known as roaming), so a user can make calls when he is not in a digital cellular service area. GSM phones usually don’t offer this capability unless you purchase and use a specialty (read: expensive) handset.

Another difference between GSM and CDMA is in the data transfer methods. GSM’s high-speed wireless data technology, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), usually offers a slower data bandwidth for wireless data connection than CDMA’s high-speed technology (1xRTT, short for single carrier radio transmission technology), which has the capability of providing ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network)-like speeds of as much as 144Kbps (kilobits per second).

GSM has a lower data transfer rate then CDMA when all things are equal. The one thing GSM can do which CDMA can't is transfer data and voice at the same time. On CDMA you must either be transfering files or talking but not both.

The only other thing GSM has going for it is that it is available in more places then CDMA largely due to EU subsidies and political promotion. Don't fool yourself and think it got there due to market forces. It didn't. Still, CDMA networks are now growing fastern the GSM networks in many areas (China, Korea) even though GSM has a big lead in some regions.

http://www.pctoday.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/2006/t0401/24t01/24t01.asp

[Dinner]

Of course tri mode or even quad mode phones are the way to go if you travel internationally. It is the only way you can always use EVERY network in every country. I think the future will be quad mode since once a company spends billions of dollars constructing a wireless network they want to keep using that hardware for as long as possible.

The only problem is quad mode phones are often ungodly expensive.

[snoopy369]

fdsfds dsfds sdf sdf

Come on now, at least try... that's the most pathetic spambot post I've ever seen, and that's saying something. Thread necro AND random typing? Get a new job, man, this one isn't for you.

[Robert]

This was a very special on-topic spambot! Truly amazing! He posted his own commercial message in the right thread!
I don't believe it's a bot. Apparently some people from India are reading or using google to find the correct threads to post in.

Anyway, he's toast anyway.

Thanks for the 3 spam-reports 8)