The Battle for Iraq's Cell Phones

Mother Jones has a new report, Crossing the Lines, on the backroom wheeling and dealing over "one natural resource Saddam Hussein never managed to exploit -- the nation's cellular phone frequencies... Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose district includes many Qualcomm employees, had tried to wrap his favored company in the flag. He denounced the cellular system used by Iraq's neighbors as 'an outdated French standard,' and proposed a law that would effectively mandate Qualcomm on Iraq." Qualcomm's patented standard was turned down, but according to the documents and emails Mother Jones says it has obtained, the battle didn't end there.

Comments

Re:'an outdated French standard,'

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine is cellphone tech, and tells me that CDMA sounds great in theory, but sucks in practice. He says the spread spectrum system can't handle many users without severely degrading, according to the tests he's read.