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CDMA, Cell Phone Standards And Who "Wins"

Posted by Hemos on from the smaller-better-faster dept.

Fubar writes "Former Qualcomm engineer Steven Den Beste, Captain of the USS Clueless outlines why he thinks the US is primed to overtake Europe and Japan as the technological leader in cell phone technology. He argues it stems from open competition and the use of CDMA."

1 of 498 comments (clear)

  1. Uncontrolled darwinism is best. by Tom+Rothamel · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Of course it may take a little while longer for Europe to adopt the latest whizz-bang RF layer in their mobile communication systems. But in the mean time, we've been able for *years* to use an *implemented* system that *works*.

    This doesn't even make any sense. I'm here in the US, and I have a cell phone that *works*. Just about everyone I know has a cell phone, and they all work reasonably well.

    SDB's point is less about cellular technology, and more about the approaches to regulation that were applied in the US and Europe. In the US, the market was allowed to decide which technology would be the winner. As a result, when CDMA emerged victorious as an RF-layer, there was a base of experience in the US with using CDMA technology, that lead to easy and compatible deployment of CDMA2000. Compare that to Europe, where TDMA-based GSM was the mandatory standard. The new mandatory standard is W-CDMA, but there's no experience to implement it, and carriers are forbidden to use the working system CDMA2000.

    This is not-invented-here on a continental scale.

    Of course CDMA adoption will still be partial, with the next better transmission system (full-spectrum wavelets?) already appearing on the horizon.

    And this is another reason why the US model is better than the European one. In the US, a carrier can at any time implement whatever technology he considers best, subject to FCC limitations on interference and the like.

    In Europe, the EU has decided to pick a winner, and forbids spectrum from being used in any other way. A result is that they'll wind up being stuck a generation behind while the US and Japan deploy new technology whenever it's economically feasable.