Single-Chip GSM Phone on Virtual Horizon?

An anonymous reader writes "There's still the alphabet soup and corporate conflicts regarding cell phone standards in the U.S. but... there might be some hope for a single-chip GSM phone, which might open up some interesting possibilities."

Comments

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this your problem, or Slashdot's? What do you think?

Now, here are some essential bits for you. GSM is a second-generation, all-digital mobile-phone standard used all over the world except some major parts of North America. The multi-user access scheme is a (somewhat weird, IMHO) mix of frequency and time multiplexing; there's no CDMA involved. It has been design with lots of competing providers and networks in mind, therefore it has great roaming capabilities. Furthermore, since most billing mechanisms (outside of North America, that is) involve NO AIRTIME CHARGES, and actually provide for cheaper in-network connections than those of stationary phones, GSM captured the market overnight. Most GSM-covered countries (including ones far less wealthy than US and Canada) sport coverage and penetration rates that still sound like science fiction over here (US/CAN). GSM also comes with cheap cross-provider messaging (called SMS) which is as popular as actual phonecalls especially among the poor population.
There are pop-machines with phonenumbers attached to them, from which you can buy your daily dose of Canned Capitalism (COKE) by dialing the number -- the cost will be charged on your phonebill. This is just one example of things those "less developed" countries already have. Now, imagine what possibilites does a one-chip GSM phone open up in societies where almost everybody has a cellphone!

Re:blech.

[karmawarrior]

I do. cdmaOne doesn't provide basic functionality such as personal mobility (the ability to seperate your account information from the hardware you're using at the moment), a global number space, ISDN connectivity, and system-implemented network features, and the security is tough enough for my purposes - a casual snooper is going to have problems locating and fixing on a single conversation, a more highly placed snooper is likely to have access to the underlying network anyway.

UTMS, the next generation of GSM, includes all of the above features and provides a variety of air-interface technologies including CDMA, so the capacity issue isn't going to last very long. As far as I see, cdma2000 still lacks the above basic features, which I find absolutely increadible especially as GSM networks have been around now for much longer than IS-95 based stuff.

I was very relieved when AT&T started providing GSM in my area, after living here four years with only IS136 (D-AMPS/TDMA), cdmaOne, and NexTel networks available. Having used both IS136 and cdmaOne networks, I felt I was giving up a huge amount to use them, and coming back to GSM has been a joy. Just being able to have a PDA phone again (not really a great idea on a non-GSM network - if you can't leave your PDA at home without losing your connectivity, who wants such a thing?) has been fantastic.

USA != The World

[halftrack]

Aargh ... Why are you being so difficult? Most western countries have agreed to adapt GPRS as a temporary standard before a UMTS-net is up and running. You are moving towards isolation regarding mobile technology, that isn't good. Not for you and not for the other 95.5% of the world population. (world PopClock and cia factbook)

Re:blech.

[Syre]

um... UMTS (not UTMS) is more like CDMA because it IS CDMA.

GSM is a TDMA (time division multiplex) protocol and UMTS is a CDMA (code division multiple access) protocol.

More information on cdma and UMTS and on GSM and TDMA.