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I think that's wrong. From the specifications, it looks like it's a GSM phone (they don't specifically say it's GSM nor do they say which frequencies it's radio supports) from the fact they say it supports GPRS.

As a result, it should work on *any* of the GSM carriers in the US that support the frequencies it uses. Let's assume for a moment it supports at a minimum 900/1800/1900 (hopefully 850 too) - like most tri-band devices do.

Take a look here. According to GSM world there are quite a few GSM carriers in the US. That list seems to exclude Unicel, which is actually a fairly large company in it's own right. Most of the carriers do support the 1900mhz band at a minimum though there are a few 850 only carriers.

their coverage is less than 50% it seems. Is that considered "good coverage" in USA? I would consider anything below 90% to be poor. Good coverage would be 95+%

If you look at the other GSM service providers, then you will find that Cingular has the best coverage amongst them, therefore offering the most potential to access new customers. Sprint was not an option, since they do not provide a GSM service. You will tend to find the most CDMA phones are ones that were popular as GSM phones and then adapted to be CDMA phones.

When you see Cingular's coverage, in the USA, its clear why Apple went with them:

GSM 1900, GSM 850, 3G 850/1900

When you see Cingular's coverage, in the USA, its clear why Apple went with them:

GSM 1900, GSM 850, 3G 850/1900

When you see Cingular's coverage, in the USA, its clear why Apple went with them:

GSM 1900, GSM 850, 3G 850/1900

Yeah, right.

South Korea uses the GSM norm for cell phones, so you only need to buy a GSM-compatible cell phone and it's highly possible you'll be able to use the same in China... Because (surprise!) China also uses the GSM norm.

Of course, having a bi- or tri-standard cell phone (3G, GSM 900, GSM 1800) cell phone, and an "international" connection plan may help as well. This being said, I think you have no idea what you are talking about.

Yeah, right.

South Korea uses the GSM norm for cell phones, so you only need to buy a GSM-compatible cell phone and it's highly possible you'll be able to use the same in China... Because (surprise!) China also uses the GSM norm.

Of course, having a bi- or tri-standard cell phone (3G, GSM 900, GSM 1800) cell phone, and an "international" connection plan may help as well. This being said, I think you have no idea what you are talking about.

Actually, if your phone is GSM, then you can already do that.
First and foremost, you must write down your IMEI number. Simply type *#06# into your cell phone. It may look like: AA-BBBBBB-CCCCCC-D . That is the serial number of the phone, and it will not change if the SIM is changed. Write it down into a safe place.
When your phone is stolen, report that number to the police. They will report it to the providers, that will lock down the cell phone for good; moreover, if the phone is ever turned on, they may be able to track the thief whereabouts, using standard cell tecnology; that, and an identikit, may actually help them arrest the thief.
A friend of mine, (who is in IT business) did all of the above, and she really had the thief arrested and prosecuted.

ticker counter at http://www.gsmworld.com/index.shtml reports a mere 2 billion

The ticker just reports the number of GSM/3GSM (AKA UMTS) users. 2.5 billion is the total number of mobile phones, including all other technologies besides GSM/UMTS.

ticker counter at http://www.gsmworld.com/index.shtml reports a mere 2 billion (If i count the 0's right) reminds me of the daily number of guinness pints consumed clock counter in the guinness brewery in dublin..

> People in this country want their cell phones to work anywhere in the country, not just in their
> home city / state. If you couldn't take your cell into a neighboring country, would you think its
> as valuable?

I think that is referred as roaming around here. I believe my cell works pretty much everywhere in there world.
http://www.sonera.net/in/kuuluvuus_ulkomailla/inde x.html
Ok, in the US coverage looks a bit spotty:
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&ne t=be
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&ne t=we
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&ne t=at

> You also ignore other things as well; landline phone is dirt cheap. I can call
> nationally for free for $25 / month. Its my understanding this isn't the case in Europe.

Typically no. We're in process of getting rid of landline phones altogether and reserving them for ADSL use, or at least that is what a large telco's CEO stated last year.

You cannot get unlimited cell calls for $25 but you can get aroung 500 minutes and 100 SMS plan with it which is enough for me personally, but is of course far from unlimited.

> People in this country want their cell phones to work anywhere in the country, not just in their
> home city / state. If you couldn't take your cell into a neighboring country, would you think its
> as valuable?

I think that is referred as roaming around here. I believe my cell works pretty much everywhere in there world.
http://www.sonera.net/in/kuuluvuus_ulkomailla/inde x.html
Ok, in the US coverage looks a bit spotty:
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&ne t=be
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&ne t=we
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&ne t=at

> You also ignore other things as well; landline phone is dirt cheap. I can call
> nationally for free for $25 / month. Its my understanding this isn't the case in Europe.

Typically no. We're in process of getting rid of landline phones altogether and reserving them for ADSL use, or at least that is what a large telco's CEO stated last year.

You cannot get unlimited cell calls for $25 but you can get aroung 500 minutes and 100 SMS plan with it which is enough for me personally, but is of course far from unlimited.

> People in this country want their cell phones to work anywhere in the country, not just in their
> home city / state. If you couldn't take your cell into a neighboring country, would you think its
> as valuable?

I think that is referred as roaming around here. I believe my cell works pretty much everywhere in there world.
http://www.sonera.net/in/kuuluvuus_ulkomailla/inde x.html
Ok, in the US coverage looks a bit spotty:
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&ne t=be
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&ne t=we
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&ne t=at

> You also ignore other things as well; landline phone is dirt cheap. I can call
> nationally for free for $25 / month. Its my understanding this isn't the case in Europe.

Typically no. We're in process of getting rid of landline phones altogether and reserving them for ADSL use, or at least that is what a large telco's CEO stated last year.

You cannot get unlimited cell calls for $25 but you can get aroung 500 minutes and 100 SMS plan with it which is enough for me personally, but is of course far from unlimited.

T-Mobile is GSM. T-Mobile will unlock your T-Mobile phone for you after you have used their system for 3 months, even if you only have a pre-paid plan.

Be sure you get a Quad-Band GSM phone like the Motorola RAZR V3 (now V3i). There are only 4 GSM bands, and a phone with all 4 bands allows use in Europe, Asia, and any place there are GSM providers, which is becoming everywhere. (Apparently there are some areas that use a 5th band, called GSM400, but that is not used in modern systems. See this GSM frequency chart. You can also look at the Wikipedia GSM frequency chart.)

I certainly don't want to recommend the Motorola RAZR phone. When I look at some of the features, I'm amazed at how poorly implemented they are. Maybe Motorola deliberately makes quirky phones so the company can sell better ones later.

TDMA and CDMA are older systems with much poor sound quality. They can sometimes, but only sometimes, be unlocked, too. But it is better to throw away an old phone and get a GSM phone.

This GSM band usage shows which countries use which GSM bands.

To get your carrier to unlock your GSM phone, display your IMEI by dialing *#06# on your phone. Then ask the carrier to provide the unlock code.

This GSM Coverage Chart shows all providers in all countries.

Find info about each model of phone using the Softpedia phone chart. Note that there are many models of Motorola V3. Older models take photos with fewer pixels, for example.

To change mobile phone provider company, just change the SIM card in your phone. GSM phones are made so that you can do this yourself.

--
U.S. Government violence encourages other violence. You pay.

As there are more people and therefore more potential revenue. Doh!

Look at the population density of the two countries, and that will tell you the density of revenue.

From the ubiquitous wikipedia article let's have a look at population density (Yes, I know the maps are for GSM, but the coverage for anything else isn't much different/any better)

United Kingdom 243
United States 30

So, you could say that as the cells cover a fixed size area, the revenue from each cell is therefore less (on average) in the US. By this rationale, any country less dense than the US shouldn't have better phone coverage than the US...

Finland 15

Hmm, this doesn't seem to support the argument either. Maybe it's 'cos we're using values for the average density? No point putting cells were no one is. Is the US more sparsely populated than Finland in these areas of low coverage?
finland
United States

Probably not. Finland seems to have more unpopulated areas, even taking into account the differences in size and density units. Even though the distances are smaller in Finland (and therefore require less cells in the wilderness), I still think it's fairly marginal to use population density as a supporting argument.

So in summary, I don't think that population size or density are particularly compelling arguments as to why the US is so far behind in phones.

As there are more people and therefore more potential revenue. Doh!

Look at the population density of the two countries, and that will tell you the density of revenue.

From the ubiquitous wikipedia article let's have a look at population density (Yes, I know the maps are for GSM, but the coverage for anything else isn't much different/any better)

United Kingdom 243
United States 30

So, you could say that as the cells cover a fixed size area, the revenue from each cell is therefore less (on average) in the US. By this rationale, any country less dense than the US shouldn't have better phone coverage than the US...

Finland 15

Hmm, this doesn't seem to support the argument either. Maybe it's 'cos we're using values for the average density? No point putting cells were no one is. Is the US more sparsely populated than Finland in these areas of low coverage?
finland
United States

Probably not. Finland seems to have more unpopulated areas, even taking into account the differences in size and density units. Even though the distances are smaller in Finland (and therefore require less cells in the wilderness), I still think it's fairly marginal to use population density as a supporting argument.

So in summary, I don't think that population size or density are particularly compelling arguments as to why the US is so far behind in phones.

As there are more people and therefore more potential revenue. Doh!

Look at the population density of the two countries, and that will tell you the density of revenue.

From the ubiquitous wikipedia article let's have a look at population density (Yes, I know the maps are for GSM, but the coverage for anything else isn't much different/any better)

United Kingdom 243
United States 30

So, you could say that as the cells cover a fixed size area, the revenue from each cell is therefore less (on average) in the US. By this rationale, any country less dense than the US shouldn't have better phone coverage than the US...

Finland 15

Hmm, this doesn't seem to support the argument either. Maybe it's 'cos we're using values for the average density? No point putting cells were no one is. Is the US more sparsely populated than Finland in these areas of low coverage?
finland
United States

Probably not. Finland seems to have more unpopulated areas, even taking into account the differences in size and density units. Even though the distances are smaller in Finland (and therefore require less cells in the wilderness), I still think it's fairly marginal to use population density as a supporting argument.

So in summary, I don't think that population size or density are particularly compelling arguments as to why the US is so far behind in phones.

Huh?

You can't buy new TDMA service anymore, and GSM is the only option for new service on T-Mobile, Cingular. Yes, only a couple--two of the biggest nationals, due to mergers/buy-outs, but actually it's quite a few more.

And "alien frequency"? Who cares? It's not exactly very difficult to make 1900 (or 850 as also used in the US) when you already have 900/1800...

If they're talking about GPRS, then they're talking about GSM.

If they're talking about GPRS, then they're talking about GSM.

Actually, no. HSPA (HSDPA and HSUPA) are extensions too the UMTS (aka W-CDMA) protocol.

The nearest equivalent for traditional CDMA carriers are the various CDMA 2000 (EV-DO revisions in particular).

GSM -> GPRS adds packet switching to GSM (approx 48k) -> EDGE is an upgrade (approx 144k).
Then the "3G" technologies require a bit of an overhaul to their systems.
UMTS (aka W-CDMA) (approx 300kpbs) -> Add HSDPA for faster download speeds -> Add HSUPA for faster upload speeds.
See: www.gsmworld.com.

Sprint and Verizon are going with CDMA2000, a different family of "3G" technologies (as opposed to UMTS).
1xRTT (similar to EDGE) -> EV-DO -> EV-DV (I'm not as familiar with the CDMA 2000 family of technologies though).

Both Sprint and Verizon have a bit of a jump on 3G ddeployment in the US. Cingular is further ahead than T-Mobile US as far as getting 3G up in the US. The majority of other countries in the world (particularly in Europe) use GSM and UMTS. Also, you can already buy a UMTS/HSDPA and EDGE and GPRS all in one PCMCIA card from Cingular (not sure what the rate plans are, though, or how far along they are in UMTS/HSDPA deployment). T-Mobile US is just getting EDGE deployed throughout their system and it will probably be into 2007-2008 before they have UMTS/HSDPA everywhere by comparison.

While it's true that UMTS (including HSPA) requires wider bands of frequency (hence the name "Wideband CDMA" or W-CDMA, btw), I haven't heard of UMTS "taking away" from GSM. SInce they are different technologies and require new equipment. It shouldn't matter if they have GSM equipment and UMTS equipment on the same tower. If you have a UMTS phone or pcmcia card, you'll be using that. If you have just a GSM phone of card, you'll be using that.

"SIM cards don't do any processing, they just store info." Nope, they're active processing devices, it's just the processing they do isn't user-visible, it's related to authentication. (See this for example - the algorithms are implemented in the SIM, not the phone.)

"You can take the SIM card out of one and use it to swap your phone book into a new phone." Yes you can, if your phone book is on the SIM. (Typically phones store phone book information on the phone these days as you have much greater storage space; usually they have a utility to copy from/to the SIM and the phone. Older / simpler phones purely use the SIM.) I've personally done this several times.

"I've never tried swapping them out and making calls, not sure if that would work." That is the main point of SIMs, and yes, I've personally done exactly that dozens of times. (The SIM is the phone number, moving the SIM to a new phone moves the phone number).

"The SIM Cards can be programmed at your local hole-in-the-wall cell phone store." Aah, well, you mean one of a few things there.

* Firstly, you could mean transferring phone books from SIM to SIM. Yes, easily done - this is transferring part of the passive data on a SIM from one to another. But this only transfers the phone book - the destination SIM does not take the identity of the source SIM (this doesn't allow you to make calls using the destination SIM on the source SIM's account). Not a cellphone clone at all.

* Secondly, if by that you mean associating a particular SIM with a particular cellphone account, you don't even have to go to a cellphone store to do that. SIMs don't actually have your phone number on them, they have their own number (IMSI) that is linked to the phone number by data stored in your provider's Home Location Register. (See here for example.)

Associating a particular phone number with a "blank" SIM is thus just ring up your provider, telling them the phone number and IMSI (which is printed on the SIM) and they add / edit the entry on the home location register/mobile switching centre. No actual programming of the SIM occours at all - hardly hacking anything. Been there, done this dozens of times!

* Thirdly, you could be referring to reading the private key from a SIM and programming that into a blank or a SIM emulator. (This is the only true cloning that is possible). That takes an hour to crack it out of the SIM or so, give or take luck and the SIM technology in use. (For example, there are "complaints" on the web that "COMP128V2" SIMs are not so attackable.)

The private key, "Ki", is actually 16 bytes long. More than enough for every SIM to be unique. The "A5 stream cypher" you refer to is the cypher used to encrypt your actual phone call over the air, done by the phone using encryption keys provided by the SIM. You are correct that this is dynamically keyed - the phone requires the SIM to provide the A5 keys; which it does by decrypting it from information shared with the network.

The information about the public key for each phone isn't shared anywhere; what happens is a network can ask a SIM's home network whether a particular phone is authenticated

Cloning GSM phones is not that easy. Old analogue phones were (which is all the situation in the article was about anyway.)

First, your link is broken, but with the help of google, you're absolutley right, with the execption of O2 the other carrier have blanket coverage of Germany: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_de.sht ml
and some other countries: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtm l

First, your link is broken, but with the help of google, you're absolutley right, with the execption of O2 the other carrier have blanket coverage of Germany: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_de.sht ml
and some other countries: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtm l

You must not be in the same Europe that I am, my cellular coverage sucks! I don't get service in my apartment, hell, I didn't get coverage in large parts of Nuremberg. Last time I checked that was a major city. Meanwhile, while I was in the US, I was out in some pretty remote areas and still had cell phone coverage, it just depends on your carrier(I used Verizon).


When were you in Germany? It must have been a while back, as these days Eastern Germany is no longer Communist, and as a result they have more than one carrier (shock, horror). E-plus, O2, T-mobile and Vodafone. coverage maps. BTW, remote areas usually have a lot less concrete in them than inner cities, so you're bound to have better coverage for an equal amount of base stations.

And unlike in the US, they all use GSM, so you can use the same phone on any network, just switch out a SIM. T-mobile and Vodafone will have the best coverage, but are also the most expensive options.


Not to friggin' mention that it cost me 5x as much to call a cell phone in Germany FROM MY HOME PHONE than it is for me to call the US.


Which only goes to show that the tightly regulated local loop monopoly is forced by regulators to compete better than the mobile networks with their oligopoly. Yay for regulation. Of which the US is surely a shining example (NOT).


This reality distortion field with cell phones has got to end. You can claim that it works all over Europe, but the truth is it doesn't. Coverage here is as spotty as it is in the US. Given the choice, I would take the US system over the European one in a heartbeat.

Take it, we don't want it.

That may be the keywords for a more extensive google search.

Here is one for 860EUR, there may be cheeper ones. Just make sure your area is covered.

Don't know about the services available in Sweden, but it is also technical feasible to provide a localisation service with a GSM mobile alone.

I think a limiting free market in the standard adoption is a good idea, though. There have been three incompatible mobile phone generations in Finland this far (starting around late seventies, I think), but they have been generations, not really competitors. And it works. Take a look at Sonera coverage map, for example. The country has five million inhabitants, most of them in most southern fifth of its ~1200 km north-south length, and highest third is mostly populated by roaming reindeer, but still, it's pretty hard to find a spot without GSM coverage at least couple kilometers from the location.

There is MORE radiation leaked from your microwave at 2.4 GHz than your digital cell phone creates. Digital cell phones also transmit in bursts of data not a continuous wave. Even our 802.11a/b/g wireless cards have the about the same or more energy as the average cell phone and 802.11 is a higher frequency 2.4 GHz. My GSM cell phone uses 890-915MHz and 1805-1880MHz or if I'm in the UK its 1930-1990MHz and it only transmits about 1 watt at peak situations, cell phones only use the power level it needs to communicate with the tower. ( click here for spectrum info ) Let's see... Cops have had Motorola 800-900 MHz 5 Watt radios on their sides with the antennas at the end of the mic sitting on their shoulders for years and they DO transmit continuous waves.. Have you heard of any cops being killed from their talkies? nope... Don't believe the QRM the technophobes feed you. 73 All! Nikropht KD5QLN

Not only will this block Wi-Fi, but it will also block cell phone communications as well. Of course, some may appreciate the paint's second use as a cell phone blocker!

The link you provide (CDMA site) while a useful list of CDMA-2000 operators, it is not at all the same as the list of 2G CDMA operators (which is less extensive).

And while you find GSM networks in almost all countries which have CDMA or CDMA2000 (e.g. in the US it is now about 50%-50%), the opposite is by far not true. Both by coverage, by countries and by number of users, GSM is the standard (e.g. over 1000M GSM vs. 226M CDMA)

Even where CDMA operators exist, you can't bring your phone to one of those countries and swap a SIM, because there is no SIM... you need a new phone anyway to use their service at local rates (while any unlocked GSM phone can accept a SIM from any GSM operator in the world).

Finally, GSM is vendor-independent - not tied to a single company like CDMA with Qualcomm...

According to the Japanese Cellular Phones FAQ cellular phone networks in Japan use PDC (TDMA-like, used only in Japan) for 2G networks and both WCDMA (successor to GSM) and CDMA2000 (successor to CDMA) for 3G networks.

By the way, GSM is the only global standard which has coverage in almost every country in the world:
with a cheap GSM quad-band phone like the Moto V400, you can roam in 212 countries, and you can keep using the same phone by purchasing pay-per-use SIM cards anywhere. Try that with a CDMA or iDEN phone...

It will be nice when EDGE comes to the US. even if I could get 1/10 the speed of bluetooth's speed to the tower I would be going faster then my DSL.

Meanwhile, has anyone got any success stories re. getting a Linux laptop on the internet with a mobile phone?

Well perhaps I've misunderstood you (or I'm being an insensitive European clod), but getting a connection to the internet through a mobile phone isn't at all difficult (on GSM networks - which is why I'm probably being an insensitive clod)

I've used a

• Nokia 6210,
• Nokia 6310i,
• Nokia 6230

• USB cable,
• Bluetooth and
• Infrared,

• a normal landline dialup (9600 bps!) and
• GPRS

Obviously this isn't limited to Nokia phones (hey, I just work here) - as long as the phone supports some kind of serial connection, you're go. No special software - wvdial does a fine job of taking care of the nitty gritty.

Gnokii does a decent job of accessing my phone features.

if you had an analogue system. We are talking about GSM kinda, which is digital :)
In any case, shouting won't work - the bits don't get through :-)

So let's see my alternative: we could track people much easier using RF-wave detection.

In Europe, many people carry GSM's. You could analyze the number of different RF-waves going around, and based upon the sensed channels and TDMA(GSM)-timeslots (max 8 in 1 GSM channel of 200khz) calculate what the 'cell-density' would be. If it's high, it means many people are calling, having their phones on standby, GPRS'ing or UMTS'ing. The potential is huge.
Based on specific data on the sort of transmission, you could theoretically even sense which type of transmission they are using, and base your screen-based advertisments on that. This way, you can grasp the potential customer even more and increase your net income. The potential is huge.
Imagine people that like to UMTS a lot - you could flash 'Go to http://www..com' in front of their eyes! Heck if - mind that I am not encouraging anything here - we could decode GSM-data we could even listen in and analyze their behaviour upon their conversations. Or grasp their phonenumbers/email-adresses/visited websites in detail. Imagine interactive spamming - the potential is huge.

This was another episode of "preaching to the converted".

You were unlucky --- perhaps you weren't using a standard network? The GSM Standard specifies 160 characters if using a Latin alphabet, or 70 if you use non-Latin alphabets like Arabic or Chinese.

Furthermore, many places and phones (e.g. pretty much everyone in the UK) now support multipart SMS, where the sender splits up a long message (320 chars or more) into multiple parts, and the receiver puts it back together at the receiving end.

Sorry.

Sorry to insist but afaik what is truly distinctive
about GSM and CDMA is that they are digital,
with all its implications (capacity, security, endless possibilities).
CDMA belongs to Qualcomm, and GSM belongs to no one (see here).

There are coverage maps for gsm readily available for various countries, including the US, at gsmworld.com

Why would you want to use Wi-Fi, when you have a tried and tested secure, ready-to-use technology like 3GSM? If it really is all about cheap calls, then 3G takes care of those issues anyway. Cellphone providers outside America (Europe-Asia) have woken up to the fact that they aren't going to make any money off voice anymore, as rates are low, and it's tough to raise then in the current situation. This was part of the motivation for upping the bandwidth available to mobile networks, so as to provide users with "value-added services" much like what DoCoMo is already doing in Japan. With so much bandwidth available, voice calls become dirt cheap anyway, since youll instead be paying for that Music Video you just downloaded, e.t.c. WiFi is fine and dandy in the states, but outside it, it's still spotty coverage (and inside too).... You can find all info regarding 3G at GSM World. Yes 3G networks have yet to get off the ground, but that's not because the technology sucks. It's for opther reasons (i.e. ludicrous spectrum license fees, inertia on part of the mobile providers to release 3G handests e.t.c.) Eventually, the mobile networks will be as fast WiFi, and our mobile phones are already just more than that. Why try and fit WiFi onto cellphones when 3G already has the inbuilt billing, encryption and other stuff ready?

You can roam in Japan if you put your GSM sim in a 3G WCDMA phone on Vodaphone's J-Phone network. Take a look at all of their roaming partners. http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/roa_jpjp.s html

There are also several WCDMA phones that are also triband GSM in which case you wouldn't even have to switch handsets.

I used to work at AT&T Wireless. ankit is right; Pieroxy is wrong.

I live in South Africa - one of many countries that use the GSM mobile standard. Here I have a pay-as-you-go SIM card, meaning that I am almost anonymous.

Going on a month business trip to Australia - I plan on doing the same thing - get a pay-as-you-go card, so I take my GSM phone over.

Go to the corner store - "Starter pack please".

"Sorry Sir, we need you to fill out all this information - Gov regulations, sorry."

Name, passport number, other phone numbers, drivers licence, DOB, blah blah.

I fill it all out.

"After they verify the information, your SIM card will be turned on"

Every single piece of info was wrong, yet my phone came on the next day.

Cheers, Andy!

Even the US market as a whole is just a fraction of the world market. Large manufacturers could easily afford to ignore the US Government/Military markets.

The person mentions a few technical details that aren't quite correct. From the article, "The Edge service works by giving up to four time slots of GPRS service to a single user. The four time slots, each good for about 30K of bandwidth, thus can add up to around 120K or so."

This isn't quite accurate. GPRS itself ranges from using 2-8 timeslots based on the class of the device. Classes 10-12 typically have 4 timeslots for download which gives you about 32-48Kbps (you can effectively get 8-12Kpbs per timeslot with GPRS). See here for some specifics.

EDGE is, more or less, an upgrade to GPRS just to push more bits of data through. A quote from Ericsson's info page about EDGE: "EDGE uses the same TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) frame structure, logic channel and 200kHz carrier bandwidth as today's GSM networks, which allows existing cell plans to remain intact." Of course, there is a white paper linked off of that page that gives more technical details for eany who are interested. Note: It's not about using any more time slots than GPRS.

For carriers choosing the GSM route, the upgrade path is GSM -> Add GPRS -> Upgrade to EDGE -> Upgrade to WCDMA (aka UMTS). It is a little ironic that the eventual 3G network of GSM carriers will be a CDMA type technology (though with a massively huge spectrum requirement compared to CDMA2000). Only time will tell which turns out to be the better technology, though the CDMA carriers seem to be jumping ahead of the GSM ones. Of course, some might argue that almost the rest of the world uses GSM so it should be the logical choice. But then again, most /.ers should know that everyone is not always right. ^_-

I haven't been very much north there, but my personal experience even around the smaller islands in Sweden (archipelagos) 900MHz GSM was quite fine, using old Moto flip-fones. According to official coverage listings it's quite decent, especially for the top 2 providers.

However, I was not trying to imply that Sweden's or Finland's coverage is better or worse than elsewhere - I was simply considering the fact that the parent post's opinion:

I don't see how any comparision can be made.
Hong Kong is tiny and densely populated. How many cell towers are there in the entire city/colony? 30 or 40, maybe?
The United States is a huge diverse place. The Cellphone business in the US can't be operated the same way.

... i.e. the usual poster trying to justify why "worse is better" or "well yeah, but you just can't do that here because of XYZ..."
In this case, the poster's excuse would have been density. Which is obviously not a good excuse. IMHO, it'd be better to admit that even elsewhere in the world things could sometimes work better than here...

The process of unlocking the phone is completely legal in a lot of cases.

Well, even though CDMA is apparently so much better (I hear this line a lot, but frankly I care about usability and not about technical merits as a user) I think it's extremely smart to have decided on (or if you prefer to have dictated) a standard, which has been taken up by roughly a billion people worldwide (except huge parts of the US and South Korea I think) in contrast to the joke they call "wireless services", which I had the misfortune to experience on various visits to the US.

In addition (and if I'm a slimy, evil commie so be it, alas you guys seem to have a strange definition for communism/socialism) I think it's extremely desireable not to have such vital technologies hijacked by an ip company, but that such technology is being owned by a consortium with a formal Antitrust Policy and thus by the public at large.

What in the world are you talking about? Nowhere does this say it supports GPS in any way. I read the article, the post, and searched on Google. If you are thinking GPRS, that is 100% a completely different thing.
GPRS info

Info about the A760, which says no GPS at all (not even the unusable e911 gps locator used in some phones for emergency use only).

Finland: 40
And it is hard to find an uncovered spot.

At first, it seems that the solution portrayed in the article would make the deployment of GSM networks easier and cheaper. This would not only be a solution for developing countries, but also for rural areas in western countries. An illustration of this last point is readily made by comparing the GSM coverage of a densely populated country like The Netherlands (former state provider KPN) to that of a much more sparsely populated country like the US (AT&T wireless).

However, GSM is not the only cell-phone standard there is. Another standard which is often used in rural areas is CDMA. It seems this standard features larger cells, and fewer base stations (for, of course, a less densely populated cell). Indeed, Verizon has plans to convert parts of its network to CDMA: see here.

Does anybody have altual experience with deploying CDMA networks? (obviously, given the coverage map for GSM, I don't need that experience in Holland ;)