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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!"
Any sufficiently small phone is indistinguishable from a finger in your ear.
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
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
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
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.
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* 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?"
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.
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Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
1800mhz is not an available frequency for use in the US by commercial mobile communications companies. So you're correct, nothing new here, as AT&T will be using GSM 1900. They do, however, have the potential to roll-out a GSM network with a larger coverage area, whereas current GSM service in the US is a hodge-podge of several different companies operating in different regions.
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.
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.
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.
Typical Euro-centric blather.
AT&T isn't going to adopt GSM voice where it now has IS-136. Not that IS-136 is much better, but a) you can run IS-136 on the US 800 MHz band and not GSM, thanks to the latter's screw-the-US design, and b) they're both obsolete.
CDMA is by far the better technology, using less battery power (because spreading lowers Rayleigh Fading) and more spectrum efficiency (because it allows adjacent-cell frequency reuse). W-CDMA is one mode of 3G but so is cdma2000, upward-compatible with IS-95. GSM was hurried to market because Europe needed something fast (its analog networks were in compatible, unlike US AMPS) while CDMA was based on later technology (really fancy silicon).
The UMTS club tried to keep Qualcomm *and the USA* out. They proposed a chipping rate that would just barely NOT fit into a USA 5 MHz frequency allocation. They ended up lowering it just a little bit but it's still too large, so there's a separate cdma2000-based 5 MHz air interface (3.68 Mcps) and an Ericsson one (3.88 Mcps, I think). How truly petty.
BTW, GSM is just as "closed" as CDMA. It's protected by a patent portfolio that is shared among its club of members, but outsiders have little advantage picking it over CDMA (and thus paying Qualcomm its patent royalties).
Note also that WAP and Imode are application-layer things, separate from air interface questions. "3G" means a higher bit rate, if you can afford to pay for it. WAP was optimized for <= 9600 bps on tiny phone screens. Imode is a bit more webbish, but designed for handheld screens too.
Therefore gentlemen; what?
Why the UScentricism? There are plenty of examples of products that the US should take the advice of. Mobile protocols such as GSM is only one of them. European fashions are another.
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I'm just an ordinary man with nothing to lose.
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
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.
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.
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
seriously though - I went to a funeral in NZ recently, my Uncle was there he had his GSM phone on international roam - his works at my Mom's house in the NZ Alps, at his house on an island off of Brisbane and where he's currently consulting near London ... the same number rings worldwide - except where I live in the US (but it does work in Baltimore)
as soon as someone starts deploying a GSM network here I'm buying one
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...