With all due respect, You missed the point
Not one to normally making sweeping generalisations but that is such a typical statement for an American to make.
dev/toaster was simply making the point that the fact that 80% of the world uses GSM:
A) doesn't make it a better technology:
Just ask the Sony's Beta developers (and the folks at Apple for that matter).
B) is of no value to dev/toaster because he lives in the US, so what the rest of the world does is of no value to him in the US.
C) Not to mention the fact that:
Motorola devloped the first cell phone
Qualcomm developed CDMA
Bell Labs developed TDMA, the pre-cursor for GSM
Apple developed the iPhone
Let's face it. All of the above are American companies and we would not be having this conversation without American creativity. So I would suggest that you not make anymore sweeping generalizations. The US loves the rest of the world. Don't be too quick to assume the worst about Americans.
By the way, CDMA is a NEWER and more advanced technology than GSM. That's the ONLY reason GSM is used more, because it's older, was deployed earlier, and is therefore cheaper for developing countries to deploy today. But for network capacity, call fidelity, call security, etc., CDMA is better. Let's also remember why at&t (formerly known as Cingular) is for now, the largest US carrier - because they bought customers from then AT&T Wireless, not because they won them in the marketplace with a more compelling product.
While no wireless network is perfect, simply due to the fact that it's "wireless", Verizon clearly has the best network in the US. Verizon has invested 30 billion dollars in their network over the last 6 years - 5 billion per year - 1.25 billion per quarter - 420 million per month, or 100 million per week (far more than any other US provider) for things like additional spectrum, diesel generators at cell sites in case of a natural disaster, greater capacity to stay ahead of network demand, etc. Meanwhile, Verizon customers are the most loyal. Verizon has the lowest customer turnover (churn) in the industry at 1.2% vs. 1.8% for Cingular in Q4 2006.
Quarter over quarter, Verizon keeps adding more customers than Cingular - at the present pace, Verizon will once again pass Cingular as the largest US carrier within 2 years. (and Sprint actually lost net retail customers in the 4th quarter of '06.) Look at Verizon's best network facts at
www.verizonwireless.com. Look at all of the wireless carriers' public quarterly reports. Read Wireless Week or RCR Wireless magazines or other industry magazines or the Wall Street Journal.
Then there's the technology itself. The rest of the world will eventually convert to one of several possible versions of Wide-Band CDMA. It will just be a gradual evolution. But it will be an easier migration for current US CDMA providers (and their customers) to make the transition, since they are already using CDMA.
I am surprised by the lack of knowledge of some in this forum to assert that GSM=3G. CDMA EVDO is 3G technology and has a far greater presence in the US than the comparable (speedwise) HSDPA, the 3G version of GSM. Cingular's EDGE connectivity is comparable only to Verizon's older 1XRTT technolgy. Both EDGE and 1XRTT are really both 2.5G.
So to compare "apples" to "apples" (pun intended) you would have to compare Cingular's HSDPA network to Verizon's EVDO. EVDO is much more widely deployed at this point in the US than HSDPA.
The iPhone is EDGE only. It does not have HSDPA/UMTS capability
http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/specs.html
So have fun surfing and checking e-mail at 50-70 kbps. While the rest of us with Verizon and Sprint are surfing at 400-700 kbps on EVDO with our Treo 700 devices.