GSM: Do things happen faster?

Just started fooling around with a tMobile GSM prepaid account with the intent
of moving a couple of seldom-used Cingular TDMA phones over to it.

First thing I notice is things happen much faster. For instance in a
"no-signal" area, the Cingular/TDMA phone takes quite awhile to tell me the bad
news. With the tMobile/GSM phone, it's almost instantaneous.

Also seems like calls start ringing on the other end sooner.

Is this a matter of:

- GSM vs TDMA?

- Cingular vs tMobile?

- The relative load on each net at a given time?
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PeteCresswell