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Actually, the AC was using MBit+, not MBps...

As usual, depends which Laplanders... from what little I've heard, Kiruna is decent. Solitary farmers anywhere (or reindeer herders?) barely influencing the stats, anyway. But considering how the Finnish part falls under "everybody must have 1mbit" (with supposedly much more in a few years being a goal, IIRC), or how the region had reasonably bearable mobile coverage 2 years ago - and at least the PL and CZ parts are grossly outdated, for example (click "Play Online - internet mobilny" at the top); and yes, this is one of the stupid carriers adopting "4G = HSPA+" marketing, but their network is good otherwise.

There is no such thing as 4G GSM. 4G is LTE, which is OFDMA (and based on CDMA). GSM is ancient 2G TDMA. Verizon will be CDMA (3G) and LTE (4G). Although it will use a SIM card, it will most definitely not use GSM.

You are mixing concepts and also letting yourself get lost in the marketing. GSM is a technology umbrella governed by the GSM Association. Traditionally when people talk about CDMA at a high level they are talking about Qualcomm CDMA, which is a protocol for mobile communication, which also happens to be using CDMA encoding. Since 3G GSM, WCDMA encoding schema has been incorporated, but this is not Qualcomm's solution.

In North America 3G and 4G had been used without context and originally talked about Qualcomm's technologies. To avoid confusion new terms were used to differentiate the GSM based solutions.

Some of the technologies which make up the GSM portfolio:

http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/index.htm

Outside of North America when people talk about GSM, they don't think about 2G, 3G, etc, but about the general mobile communication technology.

There is no such thing as 4G GSM. 4G is LTE, which is OFDMA (and based on CDMA). GSM is ancient 2G TDMA. Verizon will be CDMA (3G) and LTE (4G). Although it will use a SIM card, it will most definitely not use GSM.

You are mixing concepts and also letting yourself get lost in the marketing. GSM is a technology umbrella governed by the GSM Association. Traditionally when people talk about CDMA at a high level they are talking about Qualcomm CDMA, which is a protocol for mobile communication, which also happens to be using CDMA encoding. Since 3G GSM, WCDMA encoding schema has been incorporated, but this is not Qualcomm's solution.

In North America 3G and 4G had been used without context and originally talked about Qualcomm's technologies. To avoid confusion new terms were used to differentiate the GSM based solutions.

Some of the technologies which make up the GSM portfolio:

http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/index.htm

Outside of North America when people talk about GSM, they don't think about 2G, 3G, etc, but about the general mobile communication technology.

[E]ven a lot of the tech enthusiasts who think ATT is on GSM don't know that AT&T is using a form of CDMA. i saw it in the Nexus One settings on the internet where the network says WCDMA.

Waaaaah, I saw it on dem dere innernets so it must be true...

W-CDMA is the most common form of UMTS, what is typically sold as "3G". The 2G part of AT&T's wireless network is indeed firmly rooted in GSM.

The white/black/grey lists are held in the EIR (Equipment Identity Register), which may or may not exist at all (it's optional, some providers don't have one) and is sometimes integrated within the HLR

This is an explanation (a bit dated, but still) of how to decode manufacturer code, country code, approval code etc from the IMEI: http://www.cellular.co.za/ieminumbers.htm

More info (just relevant stuff which came up googling "imei hlr eir"):
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/wireless/TCH_WIR/612218-35166861
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/wireless/TCH_WIR/608687-35166861
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/HLR#EIR

Brief description of the (global?) IMEI DB at the gsmworld site: http://www.gsmworld.com/our-work/programmes-and-initiatives/fraud-and-security/imei_database.htm

Try this: http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?x=0&y=0&z=0&cc=gb&net=hu
That's the map for "3 mobile", IIRC the first to roll out 3G in the UK, and advertise the best 3G coverage.
See also: Orange, T-Mobile, Vodaphone and O2 (haha).

Try this: http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?x=0&y=0&z=0&cc=gb&net=hu
That's the map for "3 mobile", IIRC the first to roll out 3G in the UK, and advertise the best 3G coverage.
See also: Orange, T-Mobile, Vodaphone and O2 (haha).

Try this: http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?x=0&y=0&z=0&cc=gb&net=hu
That's the map for "3 mobile", IIRC the first to roll out 3G in the UK, and advertise the best 3G coverage.
See also: Orange, T-Mobile, Vodaphone and O2 (haha).

Try this: http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?x=0&y=0&z=0&cc=gb&net=hu
That's the map for "3 mobile", IIRC the first to roll out 3G in the UK, and advertise the best 3G coverage.
See also: Orange, T-Mobile, Vodaphone and O2 (haha).

Try this: http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?x=0&y=0&z=0&cc=gb&net=hu
That's the map for "3 mobile", IIRC the first to roll out 3G in the UK, and advertise the best 3G coverage.
See also: Orange, T-Mobile, Vodaphone and O2 (haha).

Nonsense. Much of Scotland has no 3G signal (not just a weak signal, but NO signal). See for example this map
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=gb&net=hu
which shows Three's coverage.

Yeah, and has anyone ever had any reception in a 'rural' area?

This is UK-rural, which isn't really that rural.

See, for example, the yellow bits on this map.

Last I heard they threatened to make a law and the GSMA said, "no, please don't, we'll do it "voluntarily"".

But the plan is only to have "the majority of new mobile phone models" have micro usb by 2012

http://www.gsmworld.com/newsroom/press-releases/2009/2548.htm

Meanwhile in Finland you can have broadband connection even if you live in a cave and cellphone works everywhere.

I don't think that joining RAND is going to help Apple get competitive prices. (Hint: RAND stands for Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory.) Maybe they should join the GSM Association, instead.

what really sets this thing apart from the Droid

It's on T-Mobile instead of Verizon (and it has some ridiculous app limitation), so now you get to choose which cellular company (of two) you want to bend over for. (Or for advanced users, get it unlocked and choose some other carrier using GSM but the "unwashed masses" won't bother.)

And also worth mentioning that their population is highly concentrated in a few areas. Like Alaska - very low density (very few people for a massive place), but 95% of the population is concentrated in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau. Much easier to roll out a technology.

. For example, Finland. Just over 5 million people in that very large country, but 25% of them live in Helsinki urban area. Or Sweden, with 9.2 million people in that massive land area, but 30% of them in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo urban areas.

Yet our mobiles work fine in the backwoods of North Karelia and hills of Lapland. See for example this coverage map and compare it to what ever you like.

Your GSM phone was probably locked to the original provider. That is why it is important to buy an _unlocked_ phone.

All operators in Europe are basically on the same frequencies. I can go to any country in Europe and my phone "just works". If I don't want to pay roaming fees then I can stick in a local SIM and it "just works".

The problem in the US is that your stupid providers choose/got assigned different bands to operate on. So phones physically have to be capable of working on those frequency bands. In most cases Nokia will make them work on one or the other (so AT&T or TMobile), but not both.

If you want to find what frequencies each network supports you can check them all out at GSM World. They also cover UMTS 3G networks. http://gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml

My wristwatch worked in the nasty hillbilly backwoods of Paktia, Afghanistan. So did my Garmin GPS V. I love my Google G2, but I'd hate to try to call in close air support using Google Voice, getting my position from Google Maps.

...though looking now, they have surprisingly good coverage now.... there was basically nothing in 2002.

That's really no excuse.

If Germany and Poland are not so good example, take the example of Romania, that's about 2 thirds of Germany, has about 18-19 million people and probably about 7-9 million cellphone users shared between 3 big companies and 2-3 smaller ones.

Here's a list:

Orange Romania GSM coverage (old) : http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=ro&net=mr 3G coverage: http://orange.ro/acoperire/index.html
Smallest plan 4 euro a month for 72 minutes in network, 25 with other networks, 0,119 euro/minute in any network inside the country

Vodafone Romania : GSM coverage : https://www.vodafone.ro/acoperire/acoperire-gsm/index.htm 3G coverage: https://www.vodafone.ro/acoperire/acoperire-gsm/index.htm
Smallest plan : 3.57 euro a month , 0.11 euro/minute within Vodafone , 0.17 euro/minute with other networks in the country

Cosmote Romania : http://www.cosmote.ro/ro/html/cosmote_romania_coverage_map_ro.html
Smallest plan : 3.57 euro a month, 200 minutes in network, 200 SMS included, 0.107 Euro/ minute within network, 0.178 Euro/minute with other networks in country, SMS costs 0.059 Euro

There are of course options or plans that have let's say 800 minutes included for something like 20 euro a month, or there's even a 160 euro a month with unlimited calls and 2000 included minutes with other networks inside the country a certain regions of the world (US, Canada and so on)...

And regarding quality, the only time I get dropped calls is during the night 31st of December. Romania is not just flat, it has hills, mountains, everything, yet they manage to cover the whole country.

That's competition for you... all three major networks cover almost all the country. And it's obvious these companies have a profit, even with these small fees and low cost plans, so there shouldn't really be a reason no to be able to replicate this in each state of US..

Only Texas and Alaska have bigger surface than Romania, but they're both flatter than Romania.
Only ten states have bigger people density than Romania (233 people / square mile) so the densitity is not really a big excuse.

Mildly pedantic here, but GSM started in 1982, even if it took 9 years to actually get to a point where a call was made on a network :-)

But, imroy is reasonably correct. UMTS is ostensibly an "upgrade" of LTE in that the network protocols are augmented to allow UMTS calls over the newer radio layer (which has its own adjusted control protocols). You can even interject GPRS & EDGE as intermediate steps between GSM and UMTS. Similarly, LTE is an "enhancement" of UMTS (HSPA has an even closer relationship with UMTS, too).

Actually no. If you look at the maps you can see that Finland is almost totally covered with gsm. http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml

http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=fi&net=t3

You don't have to cover the edge cases of people living in the middle of nowhere, so they throw off the average in unrealistic ways.

You don't have very high expectations. Try this map. I can't find a comparable map for Alaska, but the little information I can find looks rather bleak.

If you are going to build cell towers in the US you either have to get a bunch of different kinds for the different kinds of weather, or over engineer them to handle all types. Either option adds significant costs.

The economies of scale work in your favour when you try to cover the US.

10 seconds on Google and you could have answered your own question.

http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=fi&net=ra

I should probably have added this when I submitted.

In these threads, there are often comments about population density in Europe making coverage more effective. Finland has a population density of 16/km2 - that's lower than Maine and 37 other US states.

Perhaps you think Finland must be tiny, in fact it's land area is 305470 sq km, that's bigger than Arizona. There are only five US states larger than Finland.

Maybe coverage is actually really poor, restricted to big cities? Take a look at this coverage map.

http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=fi&net=te

Do any US states have coverage like that?

there seems to be some gigantic gaps when enhanced services bit is highlighted from verizon, I'm sure out west the population might be sparse enough for them to not care, but still, eastern spots have people there.

and also, you've forgotten something, where do people typically live?

Your link compared with, Where aussies live. Notice that in order to not get 3g coverage, you basically have to be more than about 200km+ into absolute nothingness of desert, that's an effort.(alternatively just standing near faraday cage equivalent works)

Now This map (with enhanced etc selected when you get there, 3g does broadband, mms etc) vs US population distribution

From the looks of the maps you've linked, in the US the moment you drive out of a major city you've lost reception for data etc, but will pick it up again when you pass another town. with AU it seems to be the case that you can drive a fair way into nothingness before your reception dies.

Not really. Compare a coverage map for Telestra, Australia's carrier with by far the widest coverage, and a map of Verizon's coverage.

except that an overseas phone won't work here in the US, unless it's a GSM variant

Its your lucky day, pretty much all "overseas" phones are GSM phones. More than 80% of the worlds cell phones use GSM technology.

then you have to choose between T-mobile and AT&T

More luck your way: Theres a few more

*and* includes support for the US bands

Yeah that one is a bit annoying. Most of the world, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia uses the original 900 and 1800 MHz, But apparently these were occupied in the americas and so North America and parts of South America uses 850 and 1900 MHz. But a final bit of luck: Tri and Quad band phones got you covered there. Most modern phones are quad band phones and will serve you dutifully all around the world. And the privacy loving people that you are, you are going to love the whole SIM card system.

It is standardized: http://www.gsmworld.com/newsroom/press-releases/2009/2548.htm. Nokia just jumped ahead of others in standardizing it. Motorola has been working this way for years too, it's just as endemic now for other companies to use proprietary ports, so it's no surprise the Apple did, especially when the iPod cord is as ubiquitous as mini-usb cords is many houses.

It is extremely easy to see coverage maps for GSM and 3G networks.

The population density excuse doesn't hold any water at all. Check out the GSM coverage of Finnish Lapland for example. The population density there is easily below 10 per sq. km.

http://gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=fi&net=t3

Most of the UK is covered in GSM signal, and most of the urban areas are covered with UMTS which is increasingly being upgraded to HSPA. From the page you linked to, take a look at this map. Most of the 'middle of nowhere' type places are covered with GSM and all town, cities, and a lot of the 'not quite the middle of nowhere' areas are covered with UMTS.

Upgrading from GPRS to UMTS was the reason for my last phone upgrade, three years ago, and so a phone that would require a downgrade is simply not interesting to me. I could live without HSPA support, since UMTS gives around 50KB/s real-world speeds (possibly more - that seems to be the peak throughput for my current phone's bluetooth chip), and that's enough for the moment, but it would be nice to have an upgrade path.

No one is investing in GPRS networks anymore, since anyone who cares about data access has been on UMTS for years and is thinking of moving to HSPA with their next upgrade, so you are likely to have worse coverage in the future, while UMTS and HSPA networks are being upgraded constantly.

Probably never. At least for this model of OpenMoko. It doesn't support 3G, which is what most of the European networks are now flogging for mobile video/audio/broadband/etc

Flogging? Is that a British idiom?

In any case, it looks like you can still can get gsm access in the UK, and will be able to do so in the near future.

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_gb.shtml

Hear, hear! I'd like to see the breakdown of what it would actually cost to use this on a U.S. network and what kind of service to expect.

I did find this list of U.S. GSM providers by following a link from OpenMoko's Q&A page, but it's not all that helpful.

Since this device has wi-fi, what I'd really like to do is to use it as a Skype-like phone over wi-fi when I'm at home, and then have it switch to regular cellular when I'm on the road. Since I make most of my phone calls from home, I should theoretically save a lot of money this way. Realistically, I don't know if this is possible.

If you look at a coverage map, you'll see those areas you just listed are covered quite well.

I realize it's quite tempting for people inside the US and out to play these kind of one-upsmanship games, but let's not assume that market forces aren't working here the same way they work everywhere. I'm not sure if that was sarcasm about the Greenland coverage, but according to the only coverage map I could find, there's no "densely populated area" with that little coverage. If there was a way to expand coverage with the types of efficiency enjoyed by geographically smaller areas, we'd be doing the same.

Fortunately there is always the option to vote with your wallet and not use verizon service. There are two national GSM carriers and tons of regionals. You almost always have the option of picking a carrier who uses a truly open network (GSM). For information on GSM carriers see GSM World. I have long been using unbranded/locked devices on ATT's network and the experience is far and above that you could get with any of the crappy proprietary devices. And when I travel abroad, I can easily grab a prepaid sim from the country I'm in, pop it into the phone I already have and be good to go.

I think it's pretty slimy that verizon does things like disable USB on devices in order to force users to transfer their pictures over their pay-per-transfer type service. Don't let them get you with lockin. Bring your own device (byod) and pick the national or regional carrier that suites your usage pattern best.

New GSM equipment already supports A5/3 which is still secure. I think the main impact of this hack is going to be some sensational headlines and a big push to make A5/3 universally available.

1. NTT DoMoCo supports a GSM network within Japan.
2. The CECT p168 is a close clone of the iPhone, close enough that if you looked at it across a larger table you may think it's an iPhone. And many of the CECT clones have tethering ability.
3. See number 2 - a clone that supports 3G.
4. See number 1 - DoMoCo apparently supports 3G services in Japan.
5. He may be just nationalizing the cost into money units he normally uses, like most Americans are apt to do (rather than state it's 4500 Yen, just say 30 Euros and be done with it - most people are more familiar with the exchange rates between their own currencies and Euros or Dollars).

Every geek at one time or another should visit Metro City in Xujiahui, Shanghai, China once in their life. Six floors of a large shopping mall loaded with small 10 square meter stalls, all selling every conceivable electronics product you could imagine. Clones of anything ever made. We're talking thousands of linear meters of shelf-space for cell phones alone. Every make, model, feature, color, and style you can think of.

And if you don't see what you want - ASK. The stall vendor will jump on a radio or cell phone, quickly confer with other vendors, run off, and come back in a minute with exactly what you wanted. Truly an amazing sight to see, once in your life!

Looks like Russia is well covered by GSM:

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_ru.shtml
http://www.worldtimezone.com/gsm.html
http://www.coveragemaps.com/gsmposter_europe.htm

Peace!

Not exactly. In order to provision a CDMA phone the carrier needs to put the ESN of the phone on your account. They can easily refuse to complete an ESN change if the new ESN represents an unapproved phone model.

With GSM you don't need to involve the carrier to switch phones. All you do is move your SIM card. The only provision on GSM for blocking phones that I'm aware of is the ability to use the IMEI Database to blacklist certain IMEIs, typically those belonging to stolen phones. In theory, if your phone is reported stolen it will be added to this blacklist and become a brick unless the IMEI is changed. In practice, not all carriers honor this database.

I wonder if the carriers will be nice enough to let us bring our own phones (presumably paying full price for them and avoiding any carrier subsidy) and get service under the same terms as anybody else, but without a long term contract with ETF? Somehow I kind of doubt it -- wonder what the justification for contracts will be when people pay full price for the phone?

As others have noted, you read the map wrong if you just look at the colour, because a coloured pixel doesn't mean coverage in the entire area under the pixel, and once you zoom in, you'll see more and more uncovered area. In addition, your coverage map includes not only GSM, but all sorts of cell phone systems.

For a more honest map of AT&T's GSM coverage, see:
http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=us&net=b3

There too, the coloured pixels are deceiving and gives an impression of much higher coverage than what's actually the case. You have to zoom in to get a better impression of how bad geographical coverage really is.

If counting all GSM providers, coverage is much better, but still not even close to half the area, and nowhere near the coverage situation in Europe.
And to those who say that the population density is higher in Europe, that's only true for some European country. The Nordic countries, for example, has a much lower population density than the US, but still around 95% geographical coverage, and a similar number of teens and adults using at least one cell phone.

Oh, I think I was mistaken, korea got UTMS networks (3G GSM), but not regular 2g GSM. There is a nice list of countries using GSM here: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml

This article makes a lot of claims and doesn't back them up.

3G phones have better spectral efficiency than 2G phones, so they transmit less power for a given amount of data. For a given web page, this means a 3G phone will consume less power if all other parts of the system are equivalent. However most 3G phones have faster processors which offset this to some extent. The peak currents in a 3G phone will be higher because it can transmit data faster, and this means you can drain your battery faster if you are using it extensively.

Another important fact is that actual bandwidths can be far less than advertised ones due to the error correction used in both EDGE and 3G networks. If you are far from the base station it will reduce your effective bandwidth until your bit error rate is acceptably low. Thus real world EDGE speeds are less than 200 kbps.

EDGE also supports multislot which uses several time slots to increase speeds. Some networks might support class 8 EDGE while other support class 12. For a better explanation look at http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/gprs/class.shtml. The article talks about GPRS but applies to EDGE as well.

IAAEE as well and I work on cell phones. Please don't just accept rubish claims without any factual evidence.

And also, there are many more GSM carriers in the US than you might think: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_us.shtml . I can't say how many of those have unlimited EDGE data plans or useful coverage or competitive pricing, but it's just not accurate to say there's only two GSM players in the United States.

ATT has no coverage in many places. Like the entire state of Vermont. If you happen to live in a dark spot, unlocking is the only way to use an iPhone. (In this situation, it's not even robbing revenue from ATT/Apple, because they never would have any legitimate customers from this state, but that's a whole other argument.)

As for losing "lots of neat features," Visual Voicemail is the only feature tied to ATT. Those who want to use an iPhone on another carrier do not view this feature as a must have. Old-style voicemail is still functional on other carriers.

And also, there are many more GSM carriers in the US than you might think: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_us.shtml . I can't say how many of those have unlimited EDGE data plans or useful coverage or competitive pricing, but it's just not accurate to say there's only two GSM players in the United States.

Here's a linkhttp://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_us .shtml to lots of carriers.

For some reason I thought Sprint and it's affiliates was GSM. I was thinking of Alltel.

"No, of course I wouldn't."

Yet you are rationalising and defending such a scheme? Instead of defending it, you should be up in arms and complaining to the opterators about it.

"It might seem that way, but try comparing those maps to a population density map - no one lives in the uncovered areas."

Northern Finland is practically frozen wasteland, yet the cell-phone coverage is for all intents and purposes 100% over there. And the population-density overall is very low in Finland, yet we have total coverage (USA has 29.77 people/square kilometer, Finland has 16.89 people/square kilometer).

For comparison:

Cingular's coverage in USA.
Sonera's coverage in Finland

"No, of course I wouldn't."

Yet you are rationalising and defending such a scheme? Instead of defending it, you should be up in arms and complaining to the opterators about it.

"It might seem that way, but try comparing those maps to a population density map - no one lives in the uncovered areas."

Northern Finland is practically frozen wasteland, yet the cell-phone coverage is for all intents and purposes 100% over there. And the population-density overall is very low in Finland, yet we have total coverage (USA has 29.77 people/square kilometer, Finland has 16.89 people/square kilometer).

For comparison:

Cingular's coverage in USA.
Sonera's coverage in Finland