CDMA vs. GSM in Post-war Iraq

An anonymous reader submits: "Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is pressing congress to favor CDMA over GSM for mobile phone service in U.S.-funded reconstruction plans. One reason for pushing this is that a CDMA system would benefit American companies, such as California-based Qualcomm, while GSM would favor European companies. Currently, GSM is the most widely used mobile standard in surrounding countries."

Comments

Uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

There's already that sort of aid on the way, and Bush wants another 8 billion or so to be spent on that in the first 6 months. That's not counting other private group charities. They have to look at all these different issues as part of rebuilding. It's like saying we shouldn't bother fighting the common cold until we've got cancer taken care of.

Re:In other news

[Milican]

"He is still on Haliburton's payroll and still owns 8 million of Haliburton's stock options."

I'm sorry, but thats incorrect. The quote below with source proves it....

"Cheney divested himself of all interest in Halliburton, the largest U.S. oilfield services company, after the 2000 election." CNN Money

Hope that helps clear things up :)

JOhn

In sparsely pop'd Oz CDMA goes a longer -distance-

[ivi]

If you leave the last big town, to go bush
in Australia, you might as well leave your
GSM handset behind, in favor of a CDMA unit.

Cheaper than sta.phones, the CDMA had greater
range (over flat terrain) & about the same
air-time costs as GSM, here...

So, that's the terrain of Iraq like, then?

Re:This is a joke right?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Seriously folks, in percentage of population, the US Military has already killed more Iraqi civilians than 9/11 killed Americans.

The obvious response to this is: so what? Percentage of the population? That's a pretty meaningless metric.

However, it's worth noting that you're actually correct... or may be, depending on how the numbers turn out.

September 11 killed about 3,000 Americans, out of a population of about 280 million. (All figures are rounded, of course, because I'm just too lazy to look them up for an argument as ridiculous as this one.) That's 0.0011%.

The Iraqi government claims that about 350 civilians have died during the war. Of course, they claim to have destroyed dozens of our tanks, too, so we know their claims are far from perfect. But let's go with the Iraqi number, just for kicks. There are about 25 million people in Iraq. That comes to 0.0014%. So by those numbers, you're right.

However, we only have confirmation of about 25 civilian deaths in Iraq. That's going to be too low, obviously, because we don't have confirmation of every single civilian death, but just to put a bracket around the numbers, that comes to exactly 0.0001%.

So whether or not there have been more Iraqi civilians killed as a percentage of total population than were killed on 9/11 remains to be seen; the percentages could be quite close, or they could be off by a factor of 10, depending on how the final math turns out.

But this is all just an exercise in arithmetic. It means nothing. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, so we're not there to exercise vengance. And if we were, we would still have a long way to go, because Iraq would still be 2,650 civilians short of the mark.

Let's not worry about what cell phones the Iraqis will use after we win, and worry instead about whether or not it's possible for us to win.

Nobody has the slightest doubt that we'll win. This has been, by some interpretations, the most successful military campaign in history, and that includes the ratio of civilians killed per ton of ordinance employed. In other words, this has been the most benign war in history so far, and yet we're still virtually unopposed. Our biggest concern right now, apart from avoiding civilian casualties, is harassment from irregulars behind our front lines. The biggest campaign of resistance the Iraqi forces can mount against us right now qualifies as a nuisance, and not even a significant nuisance.

There's no question that we're going to win.

Another example: Halliburton

[NOLAChief]

Anyone else notice that Halliburton (formerly helmed by Dick Cheney) got a nice contract to put out the oil wells that have been set on fire? Another coincidence?

Re:This is a joke right?

[Evil Adrian]

Actually, no, no it isn't.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A522 41-2002Dec29.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/88244_sean24 .shtml

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/iraq gate/iraqgate.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 003/03/02/IN123519.DTL

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/01/17/iraq.chemical.su it/

Defend your viewpoint, ass!

Re:Talk about counting chickens

[be-fan]

To back this up: some statistics

Percentage of budget of US foreign aid: 1.0% (dead last among western nations).
Percentage of that dedicated to military aid to allies: ~50%
Percentage of total aid that comes directly back to US companies: ~70%
Percentage of people polled that think we spend too much on foreign aid: 75%
Average response to the question, "how much should we spend on foreign aid?": 8.4%

we've been shafted already

[wadiwood]

What's best for Iraq? or What's best for Bush's friends?

USA is not the only ones "paying" for this and yet there are no open tenders, even within the USA economy, stuff is going directly to the republican cronies of GW Bush.

Eg Cheney's company Halliburton has the oil well capping project already, nobody else got a look in.

Surely if the USA people are paying for this (which I dispute that they are the only contributors), then shouldn't they be getting the best value for money available - which usually means some form of tender process, even if evaluation is fast tracked. This stuff shouldn't be automatically awarded to Bush's mates.

So what the hell happened to the "best interests of Afghanistan" after they were "liberated"?

USA global domination manifesto These people want to stop anyone anywhere from acting against their interest. So the only interests allowed will be their own. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Presently the rest of us who are not "against the USA" will be paying tribute taxes just to be left alone.

War Body Count < Pre-War Body Count

[superyooser]

Why did they start the body count at 0 when the war began? Oh right, no Iraqi civilians were killed before the war. Our war has disrupted the peace that Iraqis were enjoying. Seriously, the only kind of "peace" the people of Iraq had was RIPping with the worms and maggots in the ground.

A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."

We all knew that there would be civilian deaths in Iraq, but you should compare the ongoing war body count and post-war body count to the pre-war body count. Saddam Hussein is responsible for the deaths of several hundred thousand people, or over a million by some estimates. He was killing hundreds of people every week. If only 200-300 were killed in a week of war, that's probably approximately maintaining the status quo -- the pre-war body count -- minus the torture. The post-war body count will be close to zero per week.

Re:An Insult to The Fighting, The Dead and Dying

[superyooser]

Report on the seven year old girl lying in a pool of her own blood, her intestines laying beside her.

And everybody knows it was an accident. But okay, let's have it your way. Oh no, blood and gore! Let's end the war! Would ending the war end the suffering? Saddam would like us to pack up and go home so he could resume power and get back to the tyrant's regular business of inflicting suffering of a brutal and excruciating nature on his subjects; this kind of suffering as opposed to the comparatively few, inadvertent casualties due to the war.

Having no war in Iraq allows persecution. Having this just war is causing suffering for a time, but will end most of the suffering in the long run.

Horrible suffering like what you mentioned is imposed affliction du jour in Saddam's regime. Its torture methods include:

• Medical experimentation
• Beatings
• Crucifixion
• Hammering nails into the fingers and hands
• Amputating the penis or breasts with an electric carving knife
• Spraying insecticides into a victim's eyes
• Branding with a hot iron
• Committing rape while the victim's spouse is forced to watch
• Pouring boiling water into a rectum
• Nailing the tongue to a wooden board
• Extracting teeth with pliers
• Using bees and scorpions to sting naked children in front of their parents

Report on the fact that the people of Iraq don't want to be "liberated."

Nine in 10 Iraqis welcome US invasion

With a smug smile they say, "We will liberate you from your God, your money, and your dignity."

"You just arrived. You're late. What took you so long? God help you become victorious. I want to say hello to Bush, to shake his hand. We came out of the grave." - liberated Iraqi

Listen to the experience of a former human shield in Iraq:

The human shields appealed to my anti-war stance, but by the time I had left Baghdad five weeks later my views had changed drastically.
...
I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad - a taxi driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I was American and said, as we shields always did, "Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good". He looked at me with an expression of incredulity.

As he realised I was serious, he slowed down and started to speak in broken English about the evils of Saddam's regime. ... It scared the hell out of me.

READ THIS

[upside]

Open http://www.gsmcoverage.co.uk/coverage.html and click on Iraq

Core points:

1. There already is a limited GSM network in Iraq, KurdTel 900
2. The Iraqi government has ordered a GSM network to be installed, but UN sanctions have delayed it
3. gsmcoverage.co.uk has this article on the subject:

Plans to deploy a CDMA network in Iraq (28-Mar-03)

The California, USA, Congressman Darrell Issa has initiated a campaign to promote CDMA as the technology of choice for any future mobile phone network in Iraq. He has written to U.S. Agency for International Development demanding that the American CDMA system be used in preference to a system that he considers inherently European, and specifically French.

His letter harks back to the older, and long abandoned name for GSM - Groupe Speciale Mobile, presumably for its French language overtones, as opposed to Global System for Mobile Communications, its anglophile name today. He says that if "European" GSM technology is deployed in Iraq, much of the equipment used to build the cell phone system would be manufactured in France, Germany, and elsewhere in western and northern Europe. Furthermore, royalties paid on the technology would flow to French and European sources, not U.S. patent holders.

He seems to be under the impression therefore that Motorola has no interest in bidding for a GSM infrastructure contract - nor would Lucent, or Canada's Nortel Networks. This may well concern the shareholders of those companies who would be expecting them to bid for any available contracts.

He also says that CDMA phones incorporate GPS location technology, which may be a surprise to the vast majority of cell phone owners who will be hunting through their handset manuals looking for this function. His legitimate concern is that relief workers could be kidnapped or attacked, and a location aware handset would then enable them to be found. However, inserting GPS into a cell phone is nothing to do with whether it is GSM or CDMA - but down to the handset manufacturer simply implementing a location based solution. Also, GPS is not the only solution for locating a cell phone, network based solutions exist that can be deployed on both technology platforms. The fact that a GPS handset will be able to give its location anywhere in Iraq is pointless if the phone is out of cellular coverage though.

Of course, the greatest irony could be that a CDMA network is deployed - and Nokia wins the bulk of the handset sales contracts. Ironic, as Nokia, one of the "northern Europe" companies that Issa wants to block from working in Iraq makes CDMA handsets, but uses its own proprietary chipsets and doesn't pay royalties to Qualcomm.

It may be worth noting that Congressman Issa represents San Diego, hometown of Qualcomm who owns the CDMA technology used in cell phones. Also, in January, the US government's, National Communications System (NCS) awarded a priority connection contract, ensuring phone service would be unaffected by network congestion to T-Mobile, a GSM network.