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 He denounced the cellular system used by Iraq's neighbors as 'an outdated French standard,' and proposed a law that would effectively mandate Qualcomm on Iraq."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Re:'an outdated French standard,'

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

GSM is a predominantly French-designed standard (GSM originally stood for ), and compared to CDMA2000 it is quite outdated (UMTS, the "new" GSM, is based on CDMA technology).

CDMA2000 has faster data than GSM (1xEV-DO is faster than GPRS/EDGE, and 1x-RTT is faster than GPRS), and it supports more users in the same bandwidth. It also excells in rural areas where the slot delay prevents a GSM cell from contacting hansets, even if the signal is strong enough.

That said, GSM is the right standard for Iraq. Every other country in the region uses GSM. It's also less encumbered by patents, unlike the relatively proprietary CDMA2000.

Frankly, I think that Iraq should be deciding for itself what phone system to implement. Here in the US, the government didn't mandate any particular system, and as a result Qualcomm was allowed to develop a whole new system for cellular communication.

Re:'an outdated French standard,'

[gl4ss]

well.. you see, instead of being able to drive to the neighboring countries and use the same phone there he wants an assload of money, for himself.

that being said, you could say gsm being 'outdated', because it isn't exactly 'new'. however, you could at the same time say that it's a proven and affordable system... besides, lets face it, it's a bit stupid to ponder what network to build if you wouldn't even have safe access to all regions to build it and it's going to tough to get the investment back(or hell, to get anyone out there to build it).

and he probably used the term "outdated french system" because otherwise he would have been laughed at so hard...

Pillaging Iraq

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

For those interested, Harper's has a really interesting article on the mechanics of the corruption in the reconstruction contracts. Baghdad Year Zero - Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia

This may be more palatable if you feel Mother Jones goes off the deep end sometimes.