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AT&T Could Soon Offer GSM To U.S. Customers
Tavern alerts us to this CNET story which indicates that AT&T will soon offer GSM service to U.S. customers, noting "Maybe US companies are figuring out it's time not to compete in infrastructure, but to compete in services." The article also mentions the investment of Japanese wireless giant DoCoMo into AT&T's wireless service; you may recall that they're the creators of the finger-in-ear phone mentioned a few months back. I got to demo this phone in October, and I hope they speed up the development -- it was fun to say "Hi, Mom. I'm talking with my finger in my ear!"
Who is providing 3G equipment? AFAIK, no one is producing 3G equipment, and at the most, they are just at the stage where they can provide 1x RTT support in controlled conditions.
Yea, 3G will be really cool, but will the Cell-Phone operators have enough money to afford it? I've heard that Cell Phone operators (like Verizon, Sprint, etc) operate on very little margins, so when people don't pay their bills, they don't make any money, and so they won't be able to afford 3G equipment...
Doh!
Any sufficiently small phone is indistinguishable from a finger in your ear.
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Rogers communication, which is partly owned (if not owned completely) by AT&T Canada, is also rolling out GSM service in Canada...
Too bad FIDO (Microcell Communications) has already been offering GSM, but at 1900 mHz, instead of the world stand of 1800mHz.
Here's the story on Canoe.ca
Money cannot buy happiness, but can buy something soo darn close, that you can't really tell the difference
Since Slashdot NEVER posts old news (cough), I assume that AT&T will be offering GSM service at 1800 MHz, instead of the GSM 1900 service that has existed in the US for years.
If this is true, then this IS good news. While GSM has been around for years and is relatively "old" technology, it is heavily deployed around the world - at 900 and 1800 MHz. As is typical for the US, the FCC decided to ignore the rest of the world and allocate _1900_ MHz for mobile service in the US.
If AT&T has managed to get a license for GSM 1800, this will be terrific for anyone that travels internationally. You will finally be able to use a normal GSM phone that works anywhere ELSE in the world in the US. There are a couple tri-mode 900/1800/1900 phones (such as the Motorola L2000/timeport and a new Nokia phone), but these are exceptions.
Of course, we would still need to deal with the obnoxious habit of US GSM providers of SIM-locking their phones so you can't use them with other providers, even if they are compatible. In the rest of the world, you can choose from a number of providers, or even buy prepaid SIMM cards on the street. And get this - YOU DON'T NEED TO BUY A NEW HANDSET. Whata concept.
Of course, it's more likely that Slashdot got conned by the AT&T press release into thinking they were up to something new. They're probably just doing GSM 1900, like Pac Bell, VoiceStream, and dozens of others.
Sorry, forgot the URL
http://www.gsmworld.com
GSM/TDMA/CDMA/FDMA/etc are not really the same type of thing, and can't really be compared. CDMA/TDMA/FDMA are air interfaces - methods of moduating data & sharing spectrum among multiple users. GSM is an all-encompassing system for mobile phones which uses TDMA & FDMA to get it's data on the air. What most people think of as TDMA is actually a standard called IS-136 that happens to use TDMA, likewise IS-95 is often called CDMA, even though it is not the only system that uses CDMA and if things go well, GSM (3g) will soon use CDMA too.
Finally, the voice compression performance and quality is also, completely seperate from both the air interface and the over all system in place. GSM/IS-95/IS-136 can all use a number of different vocoders to compress your speech, all offering varying bandwidth/quality tradeoffs.
All this and more can be explained here:
http://www.arcx.com/sites/
http://www.arcx.com/sites/CDMAvsTDMA.htm
This is BS...
Europeans researchers find something, then go to the us for financing...
gsm encryption is still better than no e=ncryption used by most cell phones currently in the US
SWBell's wireless that they market under thier own name is a TDMA based service, so it will be interesting to see where the service of SWB its subsidiaries head if they partner with bellsouth.
I dont know if its just where you live, but in the Austin / San Antonio TX area, ATT service is great. I always have a strong signal, and the quality is great. At school (UT) i've been in rooms that are a story underground in the middle of the building (and these buildings have bomb shelter signs on the outside, so they should be made of good thick signal blocking concrete), and have my phone ring, and the other people in the room immediatly know i have ATT. Why? because no one slses phone can get a signal. Thats just one specialized case, but overall, the service is great. I had sprint at one point, but thier service was terrible in comparison. The only place i can really say the quality of my reception was less than average, was during spring break when i was in Pagosa Springs colorado skiing, in town i had to roam on AMPS though , so i really cant blame ATT for the quality (but up until the mountains, i kept an ATT signal all the way from austin)
So basically, nothing that makes the US cell phone technology any more compatible with the rest of the world. And it's hard to see how this will be any good for roaming users, unless they're planning on making all phones dual-mode 1800/1900.
I'm working in Hong Kong now, and the mobile saturation and technology is FAR ahead of the US. There are around a dozen mobile service providers, and usage is around 60% of the population.
The ITU meeting will be here next week, and technology will be exhibited that will be deployed here YEARS before it shows up in the US. The biggest reason for this is that the US networks are completly non-standard both in terms of frequencies and standards.
It would be nice if the US gets around to joining the rest of the world one of these days.
Why is GSM so great? Here in Europe, we'll be using UMTS before AT&T give you GSM. America is just so last millenium. :-P
--
IIRC (it's been a while, so this is based purely on memory), the method found to crack GSM is using a hardware solution -- not readily available hardware or software -- and even then it's time consuming and expensive.
So, you're not going to have Joe Weirdo down the street listening in on your conversation with a (relatively cheap) scanner as in the earlier days of cellular.
Pharmecutical research is all american
Except for little matters like the largest pharma companies being british, german, etc. Oh yes, and most of 'US' co Pfizer's innovations being made in kent, uk - incl Viagra.
Computer science is all american
Oh come on, you'll have to do better than that. One word - helsinki. Another - Symbian
semiconductor technology is all american
ARM - used in most phones and PDAs
military tech is all american,
I'll give you that one. Euro military is crap.
Sorry to burst your bubble, pal, but it's "UMTS" not "UTMS". "UMTS" stands for "Unified Mobile Telecommunications System".
OK, bad spelling on my side - as long as we agree that we're referring to this.
UMTS is known as Wideband CDMA in the US and Japan.
Bad spelling aside, does this mean that there is current/future support for UMTS in the US and Japan? Now *that* would be cool...
Black holes are where God divided by zero
The area in which the US has an unqualified advantage - military technology - is "socialistic," commissioned, paid for and sometimes carried out by the Federal government. Ironic, since the (probably a troll) US-is-number-one chest-beating was originally a defense of pure capitalism against mixed economies
All I have to say is go go gadget phone! heh
Let's not forget the #1 feature of GSM to us Americans:
:-(
INCOMING CALLS ARE FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just finished 3 months study in Sheffield, back in the US
Uh... Why does the poster think that the US doesn't have GSM service? GSM 1900 is in widespread usage. Licensed providers include Sprint, BellSouth, Omnipoint, PacBell, etc.
I don't know what Cingular is going to do though, they have a mix of TDMA and GSM networks. I guess the next gen of stations should be able to handle both, but it will be expensive one way or the other to replace those handsets.
Haven't been to The Netherlands yet, but I hear it is beautiful and will have to get there soon.
I guess I should have qualified my comment a bit further by stating that I meant general infrastructure (ie. transportation, etc). My slant is also biased a bit towards experiences in the UK, which of course is not most of Europe.
I stand corrected.
This might actually be a smart move. GSM is the dominant 2G standard across the world, and it makes sense to buy into it. EDGE gives pretty much 3G performance. Whether UMTS (the big new 3G standard) turns out to be the biggest turkey in history is a moot point. No-one is sure at the moment whether they have done their sums right. It could be a bloodbath if the market turns out not to be there
regards,
treefrog
Not only is GSM regarded as seriously technically inferior to CDMA by every well-respected authority on wireless, but there's the health angle, too:
GSM is a form of TDMA, and *every* study that has shown a linkage between cellphones and cancer (like the famous Adelaide study) has been using GSM. The ones that don't are nearly always using somethign else.
CDMA in particular, almost certainly has the most minimal impact on biological systems, since it's signal looks like low-amplitude, broadband noise, rahter than having the extremely fast and spiky high-power "square" waves of GSM and TDMA.
You can use GSM or TDMA if you want to - I'll stick with newer, better, and much safer wireless technology, thank you.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Is it right, that in the US, 1 must pay to receive calls as well as make them?
What a weird concept!
As for GSM coverage in the US, I beleive Voicestream provides coverage in several of the larger US cities.
Area51 - We are watching...
yeah like that damn metric system, what fool thought that up, everything in powers of ten, why make it easy. come on everything must be dificult we're the US.
A blog about stuff.
Meanwhile, Cingular's network looks to me like it's an absolute mess. Cingular is actually a combination of Ameritech, SW Bell, Pac Bell, Nevada Bell, Cellular One, and SNet. Pac Bell and Nevada Bell are GSM 1900 carriers, while Ameritech is TDMA and SW Bell is CDMA and TDMA! AFAIK, there is no equipment that works on both CDMA and TDMA networks, let alone any GSM handsets that work on anything besides GSM networks. Sure, they may claim to have some sort of "national network", but unless I'm absolutely missing something, there's no way that a Cingular customer can use their handset everywhere on the Cingular network.
GSM is Global System for Mobiles. It is a digital standard for cellular telephones which runs at between 9600bits/sec and 14.4bits/sec.
There are two particularly popular features of GSM:
I can take my Nokia 7110 mobile phone to virtually anywhere in Europe and it works. No hassle.
There are, of course, some downsides. Biggest of these is that the transmitters have to be much closer together than analogue transmitters to ensure consistent coverage.
This isn't a problem in densely populated continents such as Europe or Asia. In the UK for instance, there is near 100% coverage of landmass, even in rural areas- I have strong mobile phone reception at my home in Gloucestershire, UK despite being so rural that I don't have mains sewerage! In the Americas however, with large blobs of population concentrated in small areas with vast inbetween areas of little or no population, this requirement for so many transmitters could be considered uneconomic.
To be quite honest though, us Europeans consider the USA's lack of GSM coverage as frankly a frightening concept. I can't imagine what it would be like to drive somewhere and my phone not working. To me, that is as unacceptable as my watch not working.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
In fact, it's not only Europe and Australasia, but Africa and South America too. Only North (and parts of Central) America and Japan do not use 900/1800 MHz GSM exclusively. Here's a list.
Soon, GSM will be enhanced by UMTS, which will allow for high speed wireless networking (2 mbit/sec), with other nifty services, making GSM even more useful than it already is.
Cheers,
Costyn.
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Voicestream and cingular (sbc, pb) already offer GSM, but on the wrong frequencies (900, instead of 1900Mhz.)
Wrong for what? Most European countries started out with GSM 900, later on other carriers went to GSM 1800. Voicestream (and some Sprint affiliates until about a year ago) offer GSM 1900 - which means you could carry a European SIM here and plug it into a phone (hoping the phone's "Super PIN" is not held secret by the provider) and use it; vice versa, take an American SIM and plug it into a European phone (the Super PIN must be provided to the customer by law, at least in Germany), and it also works. The frequency difference however prevents from just using phones - as in, any phone from outside the US does not work inside and vice versa. Exception: Tri-Band phones (IIRC, Siemens offers one, and so does Motorola) which operate on 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz.
Madde
Well, since you're a guy who *obviously* knows everything about market driven economy, does 20+ telecom operators competing furiously over a piss-ant little country with 5 million people sound like communism? Does competition so fierce that mobile phones are frequently GIVEN AWAY to get more subscribers to talk at 10-15 cents per minute in premium quality sound like communism? And no, they get NO subsidies whatsoever.
No government has forced anything down anyones throats here. Just like you guys have FCC to regulate the airwaves, we've got a similar organization in Denmark. Instead of giving the frequencies to whomever lobbies the most, the guys who are willing to pony up the bigger amount, simply gets a frequency. Capitalism at work...
Black holes are where God divided by zero
From Ericsson's press release:
As a part of the agreement, AT&T Wireless will use Ericsson's R520 mobile phones to launch its General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network
I guess this means AT&T's service will be SIMM-locked.
Does anyone know what's the point in SIMM-locking?
Everybody knows it's silly and cumbersome so why do it?
All Rights Reversed.
yeah, I CAN see the point in SIMM-locking...
All Rights Reversed.
GSM is not used in Japan. (indeed, Japan, along with the US, Canada and Mexico, are the only major developed countries without well-developed GSM coverage.)
NTT DoCoMo's iMode technology is vastly different from GSM, and you can't really have one on top of the other -- the former is packet-based, the other is connection-based.
Is AT&T going to offer two incompatible standards -- GSM and iMode?! How will they reconcile them??
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I have to say, I want GSM, and the (not-quite-so-)associated SMS, just so I can download fancy ringer tones. :)
---
Welcome to the nineties! :-)
Why begin to offer GSM when 3G services are starting to be tested by Verison? Nothing like being behind the 8ball before you start.
from At&T themselves...
..it's all about the Benjamins baby!!
.. and that is GSM, and later UMTS. Congratulations, AT&T for just now realizing this...It's about time.
More Info
This article states that AT&T will actually deploy GSM overlaying the existing Network "IS-136", since both technologies use TDMA..it is possible to "upgrade" the existing network to the GSM interface...
Also, for those of you claiming that UTMS will support IS-95(Qualcomms version of CDMA Heavily supported in the US by Sprint, Verizon, the US government etc), There's is no confirmation that UTMS will support IS-95 period...it will However use a more broad version of CDMA...called Wideband CDMA..which supports Spread spectrum technology, but at a far faster rate..and then you'll see some real multimedia, far better than what WAP or I-mode have to offer..
As for Qualcomm's quest for world domination i.e. charging Licensing fees just for use IS-95 a.k.a "cdma" interface is over..They lost major deals in China that could have helped them a lot. GSM won big over there. Qualcomm dropped the ball and Both factions of the so called 3G have yet to agree on a a true universal standard putting Qualcomm's closed,"proudly made in the U.S of A " proprietary interface...to bleak and dark future..
However, don't give up hope yet.. Some of the finest US centric Congressmen and Senators...have a large stake in Qualcomm and are lobbied heavily...since IS-95 was actually developed by the U.S. Military...It's in the US "interest" to support a US centric technology for world Domination. Why is the Duetch Telekom buy out of voicestream being heavily opposed by the countries' finest?? Is it because of Germany's near 50% stake in the company? No, Germany has proposed to sell ALL of it's stake in the company. So then what are the real US "interest" that these congressmen are fighting for? They're ASSets
Anyhow the rest of the world isn't buying into it...and wants to support a true universal standard
Peace..
The article is actually rather about mobile "internet" then pure GSM access.
Has anybody here ever had real Life experience with i-mode mobile "internet". I mean here ini Austria were I live WAP is offered by all 4 GSM Providers and a lot of people have WAP capable phones but still very little people use it because it is just crap(At least in my opinion.
Is this i-mode thingy really widely used in japan? What kind of things are people doing with it?
While I do aknowledge that there are certainly a lot of great opportunities for service which use WAP here in Austria the only really interesting one I've seen is a service which localizes you and then shows you the nearest pharmacies/restaurants/etc..
"Mommy, mommy! The garbage man is here!" "Well, tell him we don't want any!" -- Groucho Marx
Everyone I know who has ATT wireless sounds like they are going through a broken vocoder. Seriously, all of them (I can name at least 3 off the top of my head) hate the quality of their service - they'd switch if their number followed them elsewhere.
We all know GSM rocks and the US is idiotic for not adopting it. I'm not a socialist but this is a prime example of how a public wireless network would have been better than a capitolistic privatized network. Capitolism does not always = innovation. America = way behind Japan and Europe.
Maybe ATT is just stepping up to the plate and going from one of the worst services to the best, by adopting this technology. Let's just hope they keep the rates low and upgrade their network quickly!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
AT&T isn't going to EDGE. They and Cingular are moving towards GAIT, which will combine the 136 and GSM networks, leading to a GPRS 2.5 gen system, leading to the WCDMA true 3rd gen, 1.5Mbit network. GAIT is a standard, not new protocol, that specifies how 136 and GSM networks can interoperate. Cingular is a major contributor. GPRS is high speed GSM, already rolling out in Europe and East Asia. Ericsson has fifty or so of the 60 contracts out there. As for I-MODE, that will stay is Japan. GSM is, and GAIT and GPRS will be WAP.
So if it does have a Microsoft logo on it, it is shit? That's what I've been saying for years. I'm glad you agree.
Time to die, nerd-boy!
One reason to hope phones get more intelligent is that they might get intelligent enough to enable access to the audio path and be programmable enough to run encryption in the phone. Now that will put a scare in the LEAs.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Call me selfish and Amero-Centric if you must, but I think that the world should adopt US standards, instead of us adopting worldwide standards.
Seriously, is there any reason for ME to buy a new phone?
--
RumorsDaily
Voicestream and cingular just traded some bandwidth, Cingular got 10Mhz in NY, St. Louis and Detroit in exchange for 10Mhz in SF and LA.
This is bad news. GSM encryption has already been cracked a while ago, why offer cracked encryption to customers?
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
The finger phone sounds interesting. Quite frankly, I'm still waiting for the Shoe phone from Get Smart or, alternatively, the ComBadge from Star Trek TNG.
Sensual: Running a feather down your lover's body
Kinky: Using the whole chicken
It's a very dark ride.
I disagree. Capitalism has provided me, the US consumer, with choices. I can choose what cellular phone protocol I wish to use. In my case, I've chosen iDEN because I believe its a better protocol than GSM and CDMA. I'd rather have this choice than have a government tell me what protocol I WILL use. I fail to see how a government funded wireless network would be better than what we have now? All that would end up happening is that taxpayers would be forced to pay for cellular infastructure whether or not they chose to use it. Would imposing such a burden and removing the element of choice be worth having coverage in remote sparsely populated backcountry areas? I think not. Its also important to point out that, wireless networks in europe are privatized, just the protocol has been dictated by the government, so in any one country there are usually two or more GSM networks each owned by seperate companies (sometimes one is a state monopoly) Granted GSM has its strong points like SIM cards and the convenience that comes from it being a standard, however, it is my view (and that of most capitalists) that a standard should exist because the market decided upon it than because a government dictated it.
I have to take issue with your assault on capitalism...
Ok, first off, the daft socialist economics used in the old world have nothing to do with the superiority of GSM. The reason GSM is a superior standard is that it was developed with the benefit of hindsight. Since europe tends to be 5 years behind the US technologically, they had the opportunity to learn from our mistakes.
That's the problem with being on the bleeding edge, sometimes you head in the wrong direction.
At any rate, it's perfectly obvious to even the most casual observer that Europe would be nowhere without US innovation. Pharmecutical research is all american, Computer science is all american, semiconductor technology is all american, military tech is all american, you get the point.
Just because the leftist losers in europe managed to come up with a wireless standard that doesn't suck doesn't mean they have any real kind of innovation going on.
Innovation is as american as apple pie, good old Yankee ingenuity is what makes the world go round - everyone else is a free rider.
Go ahead, just try to come up with counterexamples.
--Shoeboy
There is already GSM coverage over much of the US, but it is far from complete, and presents problems to international visitors, who cannot use global roaming on their dualband GSM phones. While not exclusive to GSM networks, SMS is an extremely useful facility (nine billion SMS were sent around the world in August) that many users of non-GSM networks often miss out on (you can send SMSes to phones from many web sites for free). GSM ties in with the other popular acronyms at the moment - GPRS, WAP and Bluetooth (but not iMode - iMode is something specific to DoCoMo and their phones, while the rest of the world uses WAP).
There is more information on GSM at GSM World and the North American GSM Alliance.
Would someone please bother to explain what GSM service is?
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
Here in Denmark everybody and his uncle has a GSM900 or GSM1800 based cell-phone (or mobile phone, which is a better word for it, IMHO). We're getting ready to abandon it in favor of UTMS, the next generation in cross-european mobile standards. The frequencies are being auctioned away to whomever makes the best offer, and the market is going to be HUGE. Think real data transfer, not the crappy 9600 bps you get with GSM. Mobile internet, here we come - and I DON'T mean WAP!
So just bypass GSM and go directly to UTMS - anything else would be totally backwards.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Having lived in both North America and Europe, I can definitely say that in most terms NA is ahead in infrastructure.
Wrong.
The Netherlands is the country with the highest density in cabling.
All telephoneswitches are digital and 93% of all households have cable TV.
And with 5 GSM providers you have much choice.
Prices for GSM are dropping every day.
Average callprices are around $ 0,10 a minute.
And of course you don't pay for incoming calls.
O yeah, ISDN is almost the standard.
Analogue lines are phasing out.
They currently sell GSM cards for use outside of the US so that customers can have a 1-bill cellular solution while renting a phone in Europe. Nothing new. This does not mean they will be undertaking the effort of licensing GSM spectrum all over the US.
"The new upgrade path will not significantly increase AT&T Wireless' planned range of capital expenditure, although it will take the company to the high end of those expectations, executives said."
Tell me how AT&T plans to replace all of its switches and transmission equipment to GSM without it costing a dime, and without disrupting their user base. As GSM is a widely used time tested mobile protocol that has great data support, one can only dream..
Maybe you are using the Half Rate codec in your phone. Sometimes it is enabled by default because it saves battery life, but it lowers the quality. Try switching it to a Full Rate or Enhanced Full Rate codec instead. Most Nokia phones can do that if you know how.
And where are they going to get this 3G bandwidth? Currently the data (CDPD) side of the network, uses 56K frame relay circuits for their Basestations... ;)
They have been buying more cisco routers and ds3 circuits than all of UUNET.
Speaking of hardware, do you realize all the companies bidding for the contract for the 3G telco equipment?
Nortel, Lucent, Ericcson.. At 250K per basestation and 2Mill MDIS units, That 9.8 Billion investment will come to good use...
As for WAP/I-Mode, WAP is already installed, phones are out, people are developing for it now. You can get free developers kits at www.openwave.com
I actually got to see some of the I-Mode brochures when DoCoMo was looking at our NOC, It looks like they use multiple TDMA basestations for broadband, so you get the combined bandwidth. They had Video phones, streaming audio phones, even some cool Mp3 phones on display.. Very cool stuffs.
Also, didn't see one darn thing about PocketNet on that article from Cnet. Currently we are giving the service away free. Also kind of funny, Phone.com (aka now Openwave) sells the gateway software that both Sprint and Verizon uses. Guess who co-developed with phone.com (cough) ATTWS (cough)...
The world is smaller than you think.
*disclaimer, if your my boss reading slashdot, someone stole my slashdot account.
Nokia has a press release up which says they are going to sell AT&T a GSM/EDGE/UTMS system, but it is at 1900MHz, same as the current US GSM. It does GPRS as well.
Have a look here for more info...
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200011/800453_5.html
Ehh, the drive behind GSM was also the market.
And the sound quality is quiete good.
only problem is the link they use to connect a GSM transmitter to the phone network.
If they use shitty lines, the quality is also shitty.
Last week somebody called me from Italy with his GSM-phone.
I have ISDN at home.
The quality was quite good.
But the quality of phonesystem in the Netherlands is quite good.
Which isn't so special because all telephone switched are 100% digital.
Analogue lines are not so common any more.
ISDN is almost the common standard for telephone lines in the Netherlands.
And the price difference between an ISDN-line and an analogue telephone line is less dan $ 6 a month.
With ISDN you get two B-channels and four phonenumbers.
If anybody bothered to read the CNET article and/or research the topic, they'd understand that AT&T is no more adopting GSM than Morse code.
GSM is an obsolescent technology, a clever hack for the 1980s but terribly inefficient by today's standards. The GSM community is planning to migrate to new "3G" protocols, which are designed to accommodate GSM migration while using a CDMA-derived technology.
AT&T is planning to use EDGE (a data upgrade of their current IS-136 TDMA protocol) and migrate to new formats that will, in the 3G spirit, interwork better with GSM. And they've got the common sense to use imode rather than WAP, which is pretty awful. So in a while their sets will be data-compatible with where GSM networks will be. But that's NOT the same as adopting GSM in the latter's twilight of existence.
..and while the U.S. finally get widespread GSM, several European countries have awarded UMTS licenses and expect to see commercial launch by 2001. At least we'll have a market for our obsolete GSM phones.. :D
That CNET article isn't too informative, here's some more info (Source: AT&T's, Ericsson's and Nokia's press releases):
Nokia and Ericsson will deliver the network base stations, planning & implementation.
It will be 1900 MHz, GPRS-ready, triple-mode (GSM/EDGE/UMTS) system.
Network will evolve to UMTS 'over the next several years' (says AT&T).
AT&T Wireless will use Ericsson's R520 mobile phones to launch its GPRS network.
DoCoMo will provide i-mode. (OK.. CNET told that.)
Initial launch will be in first half of 2001
;)
This means AT&T's network will have great services (i-mode), great tech (GSM), reasonable speed (GPRS/EDGE) and later on will implement UMTS.
Looks like this will bring wireless USA to a new era.
BTW: As a European I have to admit I'm a little bit jealous about that i-mode thing
All Rights Reversed.
hopefully i'll be able to transfer my company AT&T service to a VisorPhone so i don't have to change my number, and use voicestream's service..
according to the goobers at best buy, the visorphone will be out next week, sold as just another GSM phone through voicestream
This is not true, my landline telephone bills aren't increased because my telephone company doesn't offer wireless service and the company i have my wireless service doesn't have a local/long distance service. The reason I'm guaranteed the phone will work is because Nextel is in the iDEN business and ONLY that business. They don't offer cdma phones and they don't do analog roaming therefore there 100% of their network expansion is of their iDEN network and it HAS to be because that's how they make their money.
I find this a bit funny. I personaly don't like
mobiles, but to think this old obsolete
technology is just apearing in the USA makes me
laugh. Is this "technology leadership"?
If it takes GSM to make the caller pay, that is good however. It is still a laugh over here that
the _receiving party_ pays for the call. Have
some respect for tradition! Equally funny is
when a phone is forwarded to here, the _receiver_
pays upto and over $1.00/min! (Payphomes are
ALOT less)
Beware GSM is a scam. A scam allways flys better
in the US of A. You've been warned. But what
good can this do for a country that cannot elect
a president?
Disgusted ex-pat
Therefore gentlemen; what?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is GSM one of the types of networks that they use in other countries (not u.s.) that so many nifty phones will solely support?
The Technonaut
is this the technology you mean?
It's stated that this technology actually bases on GSM. I can't judge if it's better then the normal GSM networks we have over here in Europe but I have to mention a few things
The thing you mention with the several differnet protocls, well, we had just that over here in europe a few years ago.
Every country had it's own standard which was used by the local company(a lot of monopolies, you are right, this has also certainly to a point hindered alot of stuff over here but things have changed).Look at this link. So GSM is actually a multinational standard and I think it is a good thing to let the providers compete by service rather than protocol because when I here switch my network provider I can keep my phone.
Still companies over here are innovating, for example one provider here is already beginnig to offer GPRS Service, another(we have 4 GSM providers here which I think is a lot for such a small country as Austria) has already offered data transfers with 28.8 kBps for 6 months now(via phone cards for notebooks, they basically just bundle several lines)
Competition is big here and so prices are relatively low, GSM at times(when normal telephones were still mostly in the hand of the state company, which has been fully privatized now)was almost the same as normal telephone calls.
I agree with you about the hazard of state monopolies but independent standards are generally a good thing.
"Mommy, mommy! The garbage man is here!" "Well, tell him we don't want any!" -- Groucho Marx
I wouldn't say that. I have had ATT for about a year, and have yet to have a serious sound problem (maybe 1 out of ever 25 calls needs a reconnect), in fact i come through crystal clear according to most people. I live in San Antonio, where is used to have SWBell for 2 years and they screwed me over, with bad serivce and billing.- -----------------------
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."
I'm told DoCoMo's i-mode service is a fully controlled "walled garden" of the web. You go only where they lead you. That will have to change here, I hope.
The simple fact is that you pay for the infrastructure no matter whether it is a publicly built one or a privately built one. Nobody is making money off of mobile phones yet, the infrastucure is just too new. Everyone's land-line telephone service (and whatever other service you buy from a phone company) bills are increased, simply because these companies are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into making a network, and rip one out whenever a new standard arrives. If you go with a private, competitive system, though, you end up paying for several networks: one for each competitor, and substantial installation, and later, removal costs. If you don't think you pay because you didn't buy from those other companies, think again: They likely defaulted on literally dozens of loans from various financial institutions and spent millions of dollars of venture captital on a phone system that was only to be torn down. That money could have gone into any number of other things. If you have a savings account, and especially if you have a mutual fund, that is YOUR money being used. And in a open market, when things are all said and done, what guarantee is their that your iDEN phone that you bought in LA will work in New York when CDMA prevailed there and your provider scaled back your service? Today, you can buy a GSM phone, and it will work everywhere in the world, except the US. Perhaps it isn't the bleeding edge or even close. But when you come down to it, dozens of other countries have gone with GSM and we'd be stupid not to follow.
/* This post not warrantied for mission critical applications. */
The US Marine Corps seems to like the Harrier (sic?).
Once it was rebuilt to make it a working VTOL craft, sure. The model we fly was totally redesigned - here in America.
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
With the new GSM standard, AT&T wireless customers will be able to communicate with Aruba, Jamaica,... Bermuda, and Bahama. But does AT&T really wanna go, way down to DoCoMo?
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I'm just an ordinary man with nothing to lose.
Having lived in both North America and Europe, I can definitely say that in most terms NA is ahead in infrastructure. However, I can't believe that North Americans STILL pay for incoming calls! While I believe in privatisation in principle, sometimes the gov't needs to intervene to define the infrastructure standard to ensure that the competition isn't eliminating the better choice (Bill? Bill? ;-) for the longer term. The whole point of a cellular telephone is mobile communications, so what better way to implement a system than to ensure than a mobile phone is truly mobile?
I also think you have a point about publicly managed or centrally planned infrastructure having advantages over privitized alternatives. The phone networks are a good example. Rail would arguably be another.
Being a student studying here in Japan, (and buying a Docomo phone while here) I've quickly learned how Docomo is doing well. They have about 56% of a market that is massive, being that the mobile market, in # of users, in larger than the land line market (consumer side). This may be due to NTT's true monopoly of the land line market (did I mention NTT owns Docomo?) and their use of expensive connection charges that makes using a cell usually cheaper per call. Also, Japan is a culture of fads (Tamaguchi, Piricula aka those tiny little pictures, etc.) which makes the desire for every person to carry a phone, from age twelve to age 70.
As for i-mode, it is currently a "closed garden" but its potential is massive. Its very quick and their micro-payment system is intelligent. For example, the i-mode service is only a few dollars/month, access to CNN daily, is a flat charge of about $4/month, for unlimited usage, but further access are just incrementally put on your bill. The adoption of 3G here (note, in Japan a year before Europe, and some say up to 3 years before the US), will make i-mode usage increase. Also, any company can get an i-mode site since there are little i-mode design firms popping up. But even though Japan's technology is always cutting edge, that is because of a few very large companies design and promote them.
The traditional Japanese company is much slower to accept new technology.
What bothers me the most, is I cant take this kick butt phone home with me! Email messaging (128 char max) for only 1 cent, .898 to be exact, which I use on a daily basis, much more than I ever dial a number! i-mode is also an "always-connected interface... I hated to have to logon/connect to services back home. Just wasted time.
Just my $0.02!
There was some chatter about this on alt.cellular.fido; Fido is currently Canada main GSM provider. (Technically Microcell Connections own this network.)
Paul
The 1900 MHz band used in the US is the closest thing to a worldwide standard phone band.. Unless we keep moving to higher and higher frequencies, someone will have already allocated them for other uses already. 1900 MHz, or something very close to that, has been allocated to 3G mobile phones pretty much around the world - the band shifts a little up or down in different places, but a mobile can compensate for (small) shifts like that. Of course, how many companies are going to go with 1900 vs. cheaper bands like 800, 450, etc...
That's more likely caused by the lack of reliance on cell phones than by 'socialist' innovation. Americans have a well rooted telephone system that is more than capable of handling voice and data. Many companies in Europe skipped the reliable phone system to go straight to wireless. For them this is easier and more efficient.
So they have a reason to be innovative in wireless. They've got nothing better to do.
The entire mess came about because of infighting between US and European companies, which in turn was mostly determined by whose patents would prevail. Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm have been screwing over their users by this stupid fight. Both the US and European governments have been riding their own companies horses, rather than acknowledging that in the end it is cheaper to just pick the best bits from each standard and move forward. All the public bickering about upgrade costs is just to hide the monied interests behind it -- new infrastructure has to be rolled out anyway, new handsets will have to be purchased anyway.
As to the encryption troubles with GSM, well, 3G would be a nice starting point to fix those. As other posters have indicated, the communications can be tapped easily on the provider end anyway, so there is no excuse for an encyption that is weakened after following advise from US law enforcement agencies.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
If you're willing to overlook short run effects, then economists have shown that over time, all major first world economies average out to roughly the same standard of living and rate of economic growth. Just because it is "novel" (cough*furby*cough) does not mean that it is truely innovative. For example, the concept of containers (trailer equivalent units) which significantly improved global transportation efficiency originated in Australia.
... errr ... customers somewhere to flog your goods. With the Feds controlling the reserve currency and inflating the monetary base (cough*LTCM*cough) all the financial risks are exported. And clearly the US has the best marketing expertise in the world. However, this chest beating exercise does tend to irritate other countries who are just a innovative but their accomplishments get drowned out in the usual hype (guess who invented things like flight recorders, X-rays, cans, radio, rubber, etc). I believe that per head of population, Japan and until recently the Swiss, outproduced the Americans (see http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7876.pdf).
The US has some advantages, it is the biggest single market so you can find suckers
Personally I think the US could do with a wee bit more social policy innovation as I personally find it rather disturbing to discover people begging in the capital city of one of the richest nations in the world and where psychiatrists and lawyers make more money than scientists or engineers.
LL
ObJoke -
capitalism - unequal sharing of wealth
communism - equal sharing of misery
It's either going to get a lot harder for us to tell who's crazy ..... or an awfull lot easier for the crazier amoung us to fit in .... just put on some OK clothes and go downtown to the financial distruct and commune with the voices
This poster obviously has no clue. Hey poster: My computer complies with both IA-32 and Posix standards. How is that possible? Magic.
F***ing idiots.
The GSM standard is so old that this posting must be considered super-retro.
What will be the next subject:
- Vehicles that moves without the use of horses
- Nifty tricks with the ZX80
- Automatic Ballot Counting...