iMeowbot said:
There is a big advantage in Europe in general for GSM, you have the population density that makes lots and lots of cells a profitable venture. To duplicate that over here, the costs outside the heavily settled pockets would skyrocket.
I had Sprint PCS (IS95 - that is, "CDMA") for two years when I first came to the US, and then switched to Cingular TDMA, then AT&T GSM, then T-Mobile GSM, then AT&T GSM, then T-Mobile GSM again...
In all that time, Sprint PCS's network was the one I had the most dropped calls. I rarely get them with T-Mobile or AT&T, and when I do, with one exception (a particular cell handover about 30 miles south of here - there's some kind of software issue I believe) it's to do with going out of coverage, not because of a cell handover.
Honestly, the notion that IS95 is more reliable than GSM when it comes to dropped calls is a myth. It
should be, but it isn't in practice. The supposed reliability of IS95 comes from "soft handoffs", where both towers listen to a handset as it hands over from one "cell" to the other. In practice, the fact most IS95 operators seem to want to oversubscribe their capacity, and the fact the handset has to get a clear signal to listen to and, 99% of the time, is the party most affected by a cell hand-off, means the cons roughly equal the pros.
For the most part, signal strength remains the major issue when it comes to dropped calls. (With IS-95, it's even more of an issue, as during periods of high demand, handsets with the best reception will have an advantage over those that don't.) Neither GSM nor IS-95 can do anything about that.
