Latest On Apple's Phone: Cingular Out, MVNO In?

[kansast]

What did the city officals think they were going to accomplish? This is cell phone service, there are no gaurantees of service quality enforced by law and a cell phone is by no means a necessity of life. If the service sucks, why doesn't everyone in town change carriers? That's what the free market is about.

Yea. but what to do when you were an AT&T customer, migrating to Cingular.. stuck in a contract.. with service that simply doesn't work.. then what is a 'customer' to do ??

Believe me, I had to fight TOOTH and NAIL with cingular.. took me almost a year to get OUT of a service that didn't work.

 

[peharri]

Not exactly.

From Wikipedia:
"More technically, W-CDMA is a wideband spread-spectrum mobile air interface that utilizes the direct sequence Code Division Multiple Access signalling method (or CDMA) to achieve higher speeds and support more users compared to the older TDMA signalling method of GSM networks. W-CDMA is a competitor to CDMA2000."

Yes, and that doesn't contradict what I said. That's exactly what I said.

And if you look at this presentation on page 9: http://www.ieee.or.com/Archive/diversity_in_3g/diversity_in_3g.pdf

you'll see that the W-CDMA standard did evolve from GSM and CDMA (IS-95).

If that's what it says, it's false. W-CDMA was developed originally for FOMA. It is not a derivative of IS-95, the only thing it has in common with IS-95 is that it, like IS-95, is a CDMA air interface standard.

It certainly didn't "evolve from GSM" either, any more than an electric motor can evolve from a Ford Taurus. GSM is a complete standard. W-CDMA is an air interface standard. Further, GSM has nothing in it at all that that's in W-CDMA.

Many people use W-CDMA as a synonym for UMTS. They're not the same thing. UMTS, 3G GSM, uses W-CDMA, but W-CDMA is an independent standard, and wasn't originally even designed with UMTS in mind.

The relationship is basically UMTS = (Enhanced GSM - FHTDMA) + W-CDMA.

There are a lot of other references out there too, but these are the 2 I have readily available.

Well, one quote confirms what I said, the other is wrong... sorry.

There is no TDMA in UMTS. UMTS uses the W-CDMA air interface standard, as does FOMA. W-CDMA uses an CDMA air interface technology, but was developed independently of IS-95.

 

[ccrandall77]

Yes, and that doesn't contradict what I said. That's exactly what I said.

If that's what it says, it's false. W-CDMA was developed originally for FOMA. It is not a derivative of IS-95, the only thing it has in common with IS-95 is that it, like IS-95, is a CDMA air interface standard.

It certainly didn't "evolve from GSM" either, any more than an electric motor can evolve from a Ford Taurus. GSM is a complete standard. W-CDMA is an air interface standard. Further, GSM has nothing in it at all that that's in W-CDMA.

Many people use W-CDMA as a synonym for UMTS. They're not the same thing. UMTS, 3G GSM, uses W-CDMA, but W-CDMA is an independent standard, and wasn't originally even designed with UMTS in mind.

The relationship is basically UMTS = (Enhanced GSM - FHTDMA) + W-CDMA.

Well, one quote confirms what I said, the other is wrong... sorry.

There is no TDMA in UMTS. UMTS uses the W-CDMA air interface standard, as does FOMA. W-CDMA uses an CDMA air interface technology, but was developed independently of IS-95.

The original dispute you had with my statement was that W-CDMA did not leverage CDMA and GSM technologies. The quote from Wikipedia clearly states that W-CDMA does leverage the CDMA signalling method.

As for the presentation from the IEEE, it jives with other literature I've read in my IEEE publications that I subscribe to and the IEEE is a very credible source in my book.

 

[peharri]

The original dispute you had with my statement was that W-CDMA did not leverage CDMA and GSM technologies. The quote from Wikipedia clearly states that W-CDMA does leverage the CDMA signalling method.

The original dispute I had with your statement was your assertion "W-CDMA is a mixture of CDMA and, to a lesser extent, GSM technologies."

This is false. There's no GSM in W-CDMA. It isn't a mixture of anything. I also made the point to explicitly point out that W-CDMA is a CDMA air interface technology, but not derived from IS-95. This was to clear up a common misconception and wasn't directed specifically at you.

However, whatever the case, there's no GSM in W-CDMA. There's GSM in UMTS, which uses W-CDMA, but none in W-CDMA. The parts of GSM that "do the same work" as W-CDMA does couldn't be less related.

As for the presentation from the IEEE, it jives with other literature I've read in my IEEE publications that I subscribe to and the IEEE is a very credible source in my book.

I'm sure it is, but it's nonetheless wrong if it implies what you suggested. The one thing I will point out though is that the alphabet soup in mobile phone standards leads common confusions of terms that have gone into this part of the industry too.

Just as "CDMA" is commonly used to mean "the IS-95 (or Qualcomm) implementation of CDMA", W-CDMA is frequently used to mean UMTS.

Nonetheless, that usage is wrong, and it's extremely easy to prove it's wrong. FOMA is not UMTS based (it has some things in common, namely the air interface standard and it's compatible with the same USIM cards, but the high level protocols themselves are completely different.) FOMA was the first W-CDMA system.

I promise you, W-CDMA is only the lowest layer of the UMTS system. It doesn't have any GSM in it, that's in the rest of UMTS.

 

[ccrandall77]

I hear what you are saying and I agree that the acronym soup does lead to considerable confusion.

In the literature I have, I see several instances saying W-CDMA is related to the CDMA family of standards. Perhaps that's the crux of the confusion.

 

[iMacZealot]

You're right in that systems like EVDO can't be used with UMTS, but you're introducing inaccuracies in the way you argue it. UMTS runs over a variety of air interfaces, none of which are TDMA.

W-CDMA is a CDMA air interface, like IS-95 (which is the air interface specification that's frequently referred to by the name "CDMA", but this is misleading as the words refer to a type of multiplexing, not a specification and protocol. IS-95 is a specification and protocol. Likewise IS-136, also known as D-AMPS, was frequently called "TDMA" in the US, but both GSM and IS-136 use TDMA air interfaces, using completely different implementations. GSM's is actually wideband and frequency hopping, making it a spread spectrum TDMA system.)

UMTS runs over W-CDMA.

A modification to W-CDMA is HSDPA. This is still a CDMA air interface (it's only a modified W-CDMA.) UMTS runs over HSDPA too, and indeed that's the air interface used for UMTS by Cingular.

Yet another modification to W-CDMA is HSUPA. This is also still CDMA, and UMTS runs over that.

While I'm just throwing facts out there, UMTS can also run over 802.11, using a system called UMA. (GSM can do the same thing)

Anyway, nothing about UMTS is TDMA. It's using CDMA (except for 802.11 which is an essay by itself.) It's not the same CDMA specification and protocol as Sprint/Verizon, but it does use a CDMA-based air interface.

What are the differences? Well, the big one is that Sprint/Verizon's CDMA, which is known as IS-95 and IS-2000, and/or cmdaOne and CDMA2000, use 1.5MHz slices of spectrum, whereas W-CDMA uses 5MHz slices of spectrum. This, and other protocol and encoding changes, means W-CDMA is better at handling a variety of different types of data (in terms of the reserved bandwidth you need for audio/video, and more bursty pattern you need for web access, etc), though supposedly it degrades poorly as you go further from a tower.

For more information, take a look at Wikipedia.

Yeah, I had an idea of it in my head, but you cleared it up, thanks. I guess I got confused at the part where I said that UMTS is TDMA based when really it's actually just intended for GSM networks, correct? And yeah, it bothers me, too, that IS-95 is not used more often.

 

[nigletsyz]

I bet anything that apple will be releasing their phone under T-Mobile. They already have a large base in Europe and the US. Plus the kind of people that will be attracted to the iPhone are probably already attracted to the other phones TMobile offers. Its a perfect match.

 

[ClimbingTheLog]

It would make no sense for Apple to go with a CDMA technology though. GSM is used by almost everyone in the world bar a few markets. With a GSM phone they have the whole European market for phones for example, with a CDMA phone they have a market limited to mainly Verizon and the few other carriers around the world who use CDMA (IIRC, some in S. Korea, some in Brazil and perhaps some other in North and South America).

Apple most likely don't want to have to make loads of different phones, so I'd expect the iPhone to be GSM Quad Band, therefore covering the largests possible market for mobile phones.

Right. It would be foolish of Apple to have an extra Engineer on staff just to handle CDMA and doubly foolish to make a second radio board for it, and triply foolish to have a second stock SKU just for the 90 Million or so CDMA users in the US and the few hundred million (335M+ total) others in Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, India, China, Australia and Iraq.

It would make no sense. Lunacy, I tell you - Lunacy.

What would be even crazier would be to use a TI software-defined-radio to handle CDMA, GSM, Wi-Max, and 802.11. Nuts!

 

[gugy]

Cingular is awesome. I get service everywhere.

Cingular sucks. They were better when they were Pacific Bell here in southern California. After that their service just dropped exponentially in quality.
I hate them, I could not get service at my house and at my office. Forget it man. I don't want ever be their customer again.

 

[iMacZealot]

Right. It would be foolish of Apple to have an extra Engineer on staff just to handle CDMA and doubly foolish to make a second radio board for it, and triply foolish to have a second stock SKU just for the 90 Million or so CDMA users in the US and the few hundred million (335M+ total) others in Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, India, China, Australia and Iraq.

It would make no sense. Lunacy, I tell you - Lunacy.

What would be even crazier would be to use a TI software-defined-radio to handle CDMA, GSM, Wi-Max, and 802.11. Nuts!

It'd be even dumber to do a Wifi-only Skype device like the Sony Mylo.

 

[KEL9000]

Yeah, I had an idea of it in my head, but you cleared it up, thanks. I guess I got confused at the part where I said that UMTS is TDMA based when really it's actually just intended for GSM networks, correct? And yeah, it bothers me, too, that IS-95 is not used more often.

CDMA is owned by Qualcomm so everytime someone makes a cdma compliant handset qualcomm gets a portion of the profit. WCDM/UMTS is not owned by Qualcomm so more profits for the handset makers. Profit usually wins out over quality.

 

[peharri]

CDMA is owned by Qualcomm so everytime someone makes a cdma compliant handset qualcomm gets a portion of the profit. WCDM/UMTS is not owned by Qualcomm so more profits for the handset makers. Profit usually wins out over quality.

W-CDMA uses a CDMA air interface, which is covered by Qualcomm patents, so yeah, they profit from the sale of FOMA and UMTS phones (both standards use W-CDMA) as well as IS-95/IS-2000 (Verizon and Sprint) phones.

 

[KEL9000]

W-CDMA uses a CDMA air interface, which is covered by Qualcomm patents, so yeah, they profit from the sale of FOMA and UMTS phones (both standards use W-CDMA) as well as IS-95/IS-2000 (Verizon and Sprint) phones.

According to wikipedia :

"And cross-licencing of patents between Qualcomm and W-CDMA vendors has eliminated possible patent issues due to the features of W-CDMA which remain covered by Qualcomm patents."

So NTT-DoCoMo have nullified any profit Qualcomm would get from W-CDMA by licensing the additions to cdma2000 back to them.

 

[justflie]

I was once excited about the iPhone, but the more and more specualtion I hear about it, the word "Newton" keeps entering my mind.

Lol, I thought of that the other day too!

 

[Squonk]

I was once excited about the iPhone, but the more and more specualtion I hear about it, the word "Newton" keeps entering my mind.

Well then, how about iNewton?

Anyway, I hear what you are saying! 🙂