NEWS: iPhone hastens death of CDMA2000, SMS looks even more silly

GSM iPhone May Be Going To Canada

Canadian carrier SaskTel is switching to GSM and building its 3G network
and says it's ready for Apple's next-gen iPhone.

Now that the reports and hoopla surrounding the iPad has died down,
there is scuttlebutt that an iPhone under development will be offered
for sale in northern Canada by Saskatchewan's SaskTel.

The interesting angle here is that SaskTel is moving from CDMA
infrastructure -- used by Verizon Wireless, for instance -- to a network
based on GSM, used by AT&T, for instance.

....

Several months ago, the Wall Street Journal quoted Verizon chairman and
CEO Ivan Seidenberg as saying: "Apple never had any intention of making
a CDMA" iPhone. At the time a miffed Seidenberg indicated that he
thought Apple's negotiations were meant to increase its negotiation
muscle over AT&T, which, of course, gained exclusive US rights...

[Directly contradicts silly claims by SMS, VerizonFanboi Steven Scharf.]

MORE:
<http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/3G/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224400664>

---

› See More: NEWS: iPhone hastens death of CDMA2000, SMS looks even more silly

Nonsense, both from Navas and that article. iPhone in no way is hastening
the death of CDMA 2000. Nor did SaskTel say that they are deploying a GSM
network.

Rather, the fact that just about every carrier is using LTE instead of
WiMax for 4G means that the Qualcomm-controlled fork of CDMA is dying.

GSM is dead, and was killed by CDMA. Nobody is deploying new GSM any
more. GSM is an archaic TDMA 2G system. Good bye and good riddance.

All 3G is CDMA based, whether UMTS (which the GSM world adopted) or EV-DO
(which the CDMA 2000 world adopted). The Canadian CDMA carriers are doing
dual UMTS/EV-DO 3G transition strategies (although clearly the push is for
UMTS). Telus has been well underway on this for months now, and
duplicating their CDMA footprint with UMTS (not GSM/UMTS).

Verizon is doing their transition at 4G, and presumably will duplicate
their CDMA footwith with LTE. What remains to be seen is if Verizon will
have dual mode CDMA/LTE phones, or force their customers to choose between
incompatible networks as the Canadian carriers are doing.

Verizon already has phones which are tri-mode CDMA/GSM/UMTS. I suspect
that they will offer CDMA/LTE and CDMA/GSM/UMTS/LTE phones.

Since 3G and 4G is all CDMA based, there is no longer any good reason to
have two incompatible system. Preserving Qualcomm's control does not
constitute a good reason. Hence death to WiMax.

iPhone already support UMTS, and has for the past two versions. A Verizon
iPhone would almost certainly be an LTE device. At this stage of the
game, it is crazy for Apple to produce an CDMA iPhone for the short period
of time before LTE networks are deployed.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

On 20/04/10 2:55 PM, Mark Crispin wrote:
> Nonsense, both from Navas and that article. iPhone in no way is
> hastening the death of CDMA 2000. Nor did SaskTel say that they are
> deploying a GSM network.
>
> Rather, the fact that just about every carrier is using LTE instead of
> WiMax for 4G means that the Qualcomm-controlled fork of CDMA is dying.

Technically, LTE is not 4G. Also, while Qualcomm does not control LTE
like they do W-CDMA and CDMA2000, neither is LTE free from paying
Qualcomm royalites.

> GSM is dead, and was killed by CDMA. Nobody is deploying new GSM any
> more. GSM is an archaic TDMA 2G system. Good bye and good riddance.

This is true. The 3G system in GSM countries is W-CDMA. It's still CDMA,
and if you're using 3G for voice on AT&T then you're using a form of
CDMA, much to the disappointment of our favorite troll.

> Verizon is doing their transition at 4G, and presumably will duplicate
> their CDMA footwith with LTE. What remains to be seen is if Verizon will
> have dual mode CDMA/LTE phones, or force their customers to choose
> between incompatible networks as the Canadian carriers are doing.

Yes, it'll be interesting to see if the much anticipated iPhone for
Verizon is CDMA/LTE (if it really exists at all).

Mark Crispin <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> deployed.
>

None of this will make any difference as long as you get 5GB/month for $60.
It will only mean the netbooks will eat the 5GB is 2 hours instead of 6 and
you'll have nothing for the other 30 days, 22 hour, 9 minutes and 18
seconds the REST of the month.

Notice how NOTHING is said about UNLIMITED service on LTE or 4G....except
WiMax.

Only Cricket delivers unlimited data (at 600Kbps on EVDO Rev A throttled to
600Kbps) here in Charleston, SC.



--
Creationism is to science what storks are to obstetrics.

Larry

On 20/04/10 2:55 PM, Mark Crispin wrote:

> iPhone already support UMTS, and has for the past two versions. A
> Verizon iPhone would almost certainly be an LTE device. At this stage of
> the game, it is crazy for Apple to produce an CDMA iPhone for the short
> period of time before LTE networks are deployed.

This is true. LTE is going to be deployed by Verizon in months (or even
weeks). But CDMA/LTE devices are a certainty, as it will take LTE at
least another year to be deployed at all of Verizon's cell sites. They
want to roll LTE out quickly because they made the decision to stop
upgrading their CDMA2000 network in terms of speed, while AT&T has been
upgrading their W-CDMA network as a stop-gap measure until they can roll
out LTE. This has given AT&T a speed advantage in the interim.

AT&T has already said that they're going to try to accelerate their LTE
rollout, trying to be only one year behind Verizon, rather than the two
years behind that they originally projected, but Verizon can gain a lot
of speed-sensitive customers in that one year.

On Wed, 21 Apr 2010, SMS posted:
> This is true. LTE is going to be deployed by Verizon in months (or even
> weeks).

Yes. The phone that I am looking for next will be a quad mode (LTE, CDMA,
UMTS, GSM) phone; and hopefully much more reliable than the BlackBerry
Storm.

> But CDMA/LTE devices are a certainty, as it will take LTE at least
> another year to be deployed at all of Verizon's cell sites.

I hope so. Telus in Canada has more or less deployed UMTS to all of their
CDMA sites, but has not offered any CDMA/UMTS devices. The result is that
customers have to choose between two non-interoperable networks. To make
things worth, Canada's northern territories (e.g., Yukon) are for the most
part CDMA-only.

Hopefully Verizon is taking lessons from Telus' botch.

> AT&T has already said that they're going to try to accelerate their LTE
> rollout, trying to be only one year behind Verizon, rather than the two years
> behind that they originally projected, but Verizon can gain a lot of
> speed-sensitive customers in that one year.

Especially since Verizon still has better coverage.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

On 21/04/10 8:27 AM, Mark Crispin wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Apr 2010, SMS posted:
>> This is true. LTE is going to be deployed by Verizon in months (or
>> even weeks).
>
> Yes. The phone that I am looking for next will be a quad mode (LTE,
> CDMA, UMTS, GSM) phone; and hopefully much more reliable than the
> BlackBerry Storm.
>
>> But CDMA/LTE devices are a certainty, as it will take LTE at least
>> another year to be deployed at all of Verizon's cell sites.
>
> I hope so. Telus in Canada has more or less deployed UMTS to all of
> their CDMA sites, but has not offered any CDMA/UMTS devices. The result
> is that customers have to choose between two non-interoperable networks.
> To make things worth, Canada's northern territories (e.g., Yukon) are
> for the most part CDMA-only.

Difficult to use anything but CDMA (or AMPS) in areas that large and
sparsely populated.

>> AT&T has already said that they're going to try to accelerate their
>> LTE rollout, trying to be only one year behind Verizon, rather than
>> the two years behind that they originally projected, but Verizon can
>> gain a lot of speed-sensitive customers in that one year.
>
> Especially since Verizon still has better coverage.

Exactly. But now AT&T has bragging rights in terms of 3G data rates in
the areas that they actually have 3G coverage, until Verizon gets their
LTE deployed. It doesn't look like Verizon wants to spend any money on
speeding up their CDMA 3G coverage. The only thing saving Verizon right
now is that their coverage, both 3G and voice, is so much better than
AT&T that they enjoy customer loyalty despite the way they behave badly
in so many other ways. Verizon has adopted the oil company law of supply
and demand--'we have all the supply, so we can demand whatever the f$%k
we want.' Of course many people don't care all that much about coverage
outside of major metropolitan areas, so Verizon's advantage in this
regard hasn't enabled them to significantly increase their market share.

"Todd Allcock" <[email protected]> wrote in news:P6Zzn.172913
[email protected]:

> In reality, how far can the cute little sub-1W handhelds we're all
> carrying these days actually transmit?

850 Mhz, about 4-5 miles unless in heavy trees or a city canyon.
1900 Mhz, 2 miles. The trees eat the higher freqs really bad and if any
of you can remember UHF TV, the multipath "ghosting" it had was just
awful, which really screws ANY digital modulation scheme of the tiny FM
transmitters.

20 miles is dreaming unless you're out in a sailboat on the flat ocean
to a tower on the beach. I've gotten that range out of CDMA 850 with a
300mw flipphone but there's so much noise on the bands from the other
thousands of callers, now, it will never work anywhere near a city any
more. 20 miles off the beach on 850 CDMA in rural SC or GA still works,
especially at night when the thermal noise from the sun and hot parking
lots is less.

We get longer range on a Cricket aircard off the boats. I plug the
aircard into my mobile hotspot (Cradlepoint CTR350 USB router running
off 4 NiMh "D" beasts with the U600 aircard plugged into it). As we get
further away, I put the mobile hotspot/aircard into a heavy plastic
ziplock bag and haul it to the top of the 60' mainmast on a lanyard,
protected from the sea air. With 60' of altitude, range goes up to
about 25 miles offshore, maybe 15 miles near the cities where the
traffic on the band is much higher. That gives us Skype service and
Google Earth as a backup of our onboard navigation system, as well as
great weather radar and forecast displays, almost for free.

The 12AH D NiMh will run the hotspot up the mast all weekend,
continuously, and still have about 50% of the battery's immense power
left to get home.

--
Creationism is to science what storks are to obstetrics.

Larry

On Thu, 22 Apr 2010, Todd Allcock posted:
> Sounds like an AT&T-style "overlay" to me, where the next two to three years
> will have two "Maps For That"- total (larger) coverage and smaller (LTE)
> coverage, just like the AT&T 3G situation today.

Telus in Canada did an UMTS (HSDPA) overlay of their CDMA network, and
claims to offer UMTS everywhere where they offer CDMA.

The issue for Telus' users is the little, CDMA-only, carriers that cover
wide swaths of northern Canada; not to mention Alaska roaming (AT&T is a
sick joke in Alaska even since they replaced their TDMA network with GSM).

Then there's the dainty of being able to roam on Verizon...

> I can't see how they can
> offer your much-predicted future LTE iPhone without damaging their "can you
> hear me now?" reputation since it would lack the ability to fallback to CDMA.

I doubt very much that Apple would release an LTE-only iPhone for Verizon
unless Verizon's LTE network was fully deployed.

Otherwise, it would be egg on Apple's face. Apple is getting a lot of
traction on "it's not the iPhone's fault; it's AT&T's sucky network."
They would lose that if iPhone sucks on Verizon as well, particularly
if other Verizon devices have no problem.

> I'd give you that one, if we were still all lugging around analog 3W bag
> phones. In reality, how far can the cute little sub-1W handhelds we're all
> carrying these days actually transmit?

It all depends upon what you want. In the north country, you don't want
to be more than 5 miles from the village if you want to hold a protracted
conversion, but you can get quite a bit further out and get enough of a
signal to exchange SMS and/or a (brief!) phone call. I've gotten usable
CDMA signal from a good 50 miles away. Not surprisingly, it was from the
summit of a mountain...

> That's because Verizon is a one-trick pony- coverage is all they really
> offer. Comparitively, their customer service stinks,

I find that claim difficult to swallow. In my experience, T-Mobile and
Verizon are noticably better than the rest of the pack. AT&T is bad, and
SPRINT is absolutely horrible.

> their handset selection stinks,

That is certainly true

> and they're priced too high.

If you want the price leader, go with T-Mobile. The rest of the family is
on T-Mobile for that very reason. I travel, and have a (very attractive)
legacy Verizon plan that can't be made into a family plan.

There is a market niche to be occupied by offering selling to people who
want the lowest cost.

There is a market niche to be occupied by selling to people who want the
fanciest toys.

And there is a market niche to be occupied by selling to people who want
the phone to work, no matter when or where.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

Mark Crispin wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Apr 2010, Todd Allcock posted:
>> Sounds like an AT&T-style "overlay" to me, where the next two to three
>> years will have two "Maps For That"- total (larger) coverage and
>> smaller (LTE) coverage, just like the AT&T 3G situation today.
>
> Telus in Canada did an UMTS (HSDPA) overlay of their CDMA network, and
> claims to offer UMTS everywhere where they offer CDMA.
>
> The issue for Telus' users is the little, CDMA-only, carriers that cover
> wide swaths of northern Canada; not to mention Alaska roaming (AT&T is a
> sick joke in Alaska even since they replaced their TDMA network with GSM).
>
> Then there's the dainty of being able to roam on Verizon...
>
>> I can't see how they can offer your much-predicted future LTE iPhone
>> without damaging their "can you hear me now?" reputation since it
>> would lack the ability to fallback to CDMA.
>
> I doubt very much that Apple would release an LTE-only iPhone for
> Verizon unless Verizon's LTE network was fully deployed.
>
> Otherwise, it would be egg on Apple's face. Apple is getting a lot of
> traction on "it's not the iPhone's fault; it's AT&T's sucky network."
> They would lose that if iPhone sucks on Verizon as well, particularly if
> other Verizon devices have no problem.
>
>> I'd give you that one, if we were still all lugging around analog 3W
>> bag phones. In reality, how far can the cute little sub-1W handhelds
>> we're all carrying these days actually transmit?
>
> It all depends upon what you want. In the north country, you don't want
> to be more than 5 miles from the village if you want to hold a
> protracted conversion, but you can get quite a bit further out and get
> enough of a signal to exchange SMS and/or a (brief!) phone call. I've
> gotten usable CDMA signal from a good 50 miles away. Not surprisingly,
> it was from the summit of a mountain...
>
>> That's because Verizon is a one-trick pony- coverage is all they
>> really offer. Comparitively, their customer service stinks,
>

How many times do you NEED customer service. I don't recall needing to
ask VZW for anything in the last 27 months or so. My wife and I have
our phones and they work. The have worked wherever we have been. What
more should we ask for? There's a VZW store in our local shopping mall;
they are there if we want them for something.

On 22/04/10 9:49 AM, Mark Crispin wrote:

> Otherwise, it would be egg on Apple's face. Apple is getting a lot of
> traction on "it's not the iPhone's fault; it's AT&T's sucky network."
> They would lose that if iPhone sucks on Verizon as well, particularly if
> other Verizon devices have no problem.

In many cases, the AT&T network _is_ to blame, and other devices have
the same problems as the iPhone. AT&T is consistently ranked as having
poorer coverage and poorer sound quality and more dropped calls than
Verizon by independent surveys, including a very recent J.D. Power
survey
("http://www.jdpower.com/Telecom/ratings/Wireless-Call-Quality-Ratings-%28Volume-1%29").
In five out of six regions, AT&T was worst, or tied for worst, while
Verizon was top-rated in five out of six regions (U.S. Cellular was
first in North Central). Only in the Southeast did AT&T avoid a last
place finish (in the most populous part of the Southeast, south Florida,
AT&T owns both the A & B side 800 MHz networks).

"They haven't fixed the network and they're going to see a huge exodus
to Verizon" when it gets the iPhone, said Edward Snyder, managing
director of Charter Equity Research, a financial research firm that
studies the cellular phone industry.

The iPhone 3GS is much improved in terms of the phone part of the device
compared to earlier models, and presumably a CDMA/LTE iPhone, if it
exists, will not regress in terms of its phone section to that of the
original iPhone or the 3G.

I would be very surprised if a Verizon CDMA/LTE iPhone does not make it
to market very soon. Apple is extremely concerned that their platform
does not lose market share to Android. AT&T did extremely poorly in
1Q2010 in terms of net additions (a decline of 43% versus 1Q2009), and
Apple does not want Android gaining an insurmountable market share on
Verizon, as a "good enough" alternative to the unavailable iPhone.

"Analysts were especially interested in AT&T's ability to add lucrative
cell phone customers with contracts. That number was 43 percent lower
than a year ago." "http://tinyurl.com/att1q2010".

Apple needs to move on. The iPhone exclusivity brought AT&T's wireless
division back from the brink, but now Apple needs to act in their own
best interests. It's purely a marketing decision. Doing a CDMA/LTE
iPhone is not difficult, and of course the chipset manufacturers would
be falling over each other volunteering to do the engineering work at no
cost to Apple.

On 22/04/10 1:23 PM, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:

> How many times do you NEED customer service. I don't recall needing to
> ask VZW for anything in the last 27 months or so. My wife and I have our
> phones and they work. The have worked wherever we have been. What more
> should we ask for? There's a VZW store in our local shopping mall; they
> are there if we want them for something.

Regardless, VZW's customer service is ranked far above that from AT&T or
Sprint. Only T-Mobile gives them any competition in that regard.

I've never had anything but good interactions with AT&T, T-Mobile, and
Verizon customer service on the few times I've contacted them.

Apple's iPhone is the Nick Clegg of smartphones: attractive,
media-savvy, and firmly in third place when matched up against its
more-experienced rivals.

The top worldwide smartphone manufacturer - by a hefty margin - remains
neither Apple nor Research in Motion but Nokia, according to the IDC's
latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report.

Well, to be completely accurate, the report surveyed what IDC insists on
calling "converged mobile devices," but what every other sentient being
on the planet calls smartphones.

In a nutshell, the report places Nokia's worldwide smartphone market
share at 39.3 per cent, RIM's at 19.4, and Apple's at 16.1, all for the
first calendar quarter of 2010. These numbers differ somewhat from those
announced last week by Strategy Analytics, but not enough to cause
cheering in Cupertino or weeping in Espoo, Finland.

MORE: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/07/idc_smartphone_numbers/>

Whether you root for Google or Apple, it's a heck of a horse race as
Android beat the iPhone in first quarter U.S. sales, according to the
NPD Group.

Android sales accounted for 28 percent of smartphone sales last quarter,
NPD reports. That puts Android ahead of the iPhone's 21 percent, and
within striking distance of Research in Motion's BlackBerry, which took
36 percent.

It's worth noting that while Android had a great quarter, it still lags
behind RIM, Apple and even Windows Mobile for total market share,
according to recent statistics from ComScore. Google's operating system
had 9 percent of the market as of February 2010, compared with the
iPhone's 25.4 percent, so Android won't catch up for a while, if at all.

Still, as my colleague JR Raphael noted when ComScore reported its
numbers, Android's growth is striking. Not only did Android outsell the
iPhone, but it's the only smartphone OS whose unit share grew since the
previous quarter. The iPhone, meanwhile, is flat, while Windows Mobile,
BlackBerry and WebOS quarterly sales share is in decline. If this trend
continues, Android will catch up to its competitors for total market
share in a hurry.

MORE:
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/195958/android_outsells_apple_iphone_at_last_says_npd.html>

On May 11, 6:25*pm, John Navas <[email protected]> wrote:
> Whether you root for Google or Apple, it's a heck of a horse race as
> Android beat the iPhone in first quarter U.S. sales, according to the
> NPD Group.
>
> Android sales accounted for 28 percent of smartphone sales last quarter,
> NPD reports. That puts Android ahead of the iPhone's 21 percent, and
> within striking distance of Research in Motion's BlackBerry, which took
> 36 percent.
>
> It's worth noting that while Android had a great quarter, it still lags
> behind RIM, Apple and even Windows Mobile for total market share,
> according to recent statistics from ComScore. Google's operating system
> had 9 percent of the market as of February 2010, compared with the
> iPhone's 25.4 percent, so Android won't catch up for a while, if at all.
>
> Still, as my colleague JR Raphael noted when ComScore reported its
> numbers, Android's growth is striking. Not only did Android outsell the
> iPhone, but it's the only smartphone OS whose unit share grew since the
> previous quarter. The iPhone, meanwhile, is flat, while Windows Mobile,
> BlackBerry and WebOS quarterly sales share is in decline. If this trend
> continues, Android will catch up to its competitors for total market
> share in a hurry.
>
> MORE:
> <http://www.pcworld.com/article/195958/android_outsells_apple_iphone_a...>

Google can code. There is no question about it. RIM had to buy a
company to get (hopefully) a decent browser. Apple had to hack KDE to
make Safari. Google can get a blank sheet and create very good first
effort code. These guys (Google) are good.

I'm a RIM user myself, but Google is the one to watch. Apple is
strictly for the fanbois that will buy anything with fruit stamped on
it. If google sets up a server network for their phones similar to
RIM, it's all over for Apple. You've probably noticed Google has
server code to make complicated web pages easier to read, much like
RIM does with BIS. [Hey, why not copy a good idea!] Apple chooses to
use that gesture gui to help the user read the complicated web page,
but that is not efficient from a power standpoint. It is better to
send carefully crafted data in the first place that is appropriate for
the phone.