SPRINT = a "meltdown," a "miserable performance" and a "di..

On 2008-01-31, Jar-Jar Binks <jarjar.TakeThisOut@nospam.com> wrote:
> Is Japan entirely CDMA?

No. I think the original digital standard there was a TDMA variant
called PDC. These days I think all the companies now support 3G UMTS,
so you can also roam with a (European) 3G phone. No GSM though.

Dennis Ferguson

On 2008-01-31, Mark Crispin <MRC.TakeThisOut@Washington.EDU> wrote:
> Close, but not quite correct. There is no GSM in Japan, but not "all
> companies" support UMTS.

Ah, sorry. If I would have thought about it I'd have known it (only
two UMTS carriers show up on my phone, but there's more than two
mobile carriers), but I'm kind of fixated on UMTS in Japan since that
is the only phone I have which works there.

> Willcom has a PHS network. IIRC, PHS is also used by a carrier in Taiwan.

I think one of the China landline carriers (China Netcom?) also runs a
substantial PHS network. I read somewhere that they are closing in on
100 million subscribers, which anywhere else would be a huge number but
which, in China, is only 15% of the market.

> The bottom line is that most US phones do NOT roam in Japan. Only a phone
> with UMTS in the 2100 band will roam in Japan. IIRC, T-Mobile and AT&T
> each have one smartphone that has that.

I've not heard of a T-Mobile phone which has it. AT&T has one.

Dennis Ferguson

On 2008-01-31, Mark Crispin <mrc RemoveThis @Washington.EDU> wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, Dennis Ferguson posted:
>> Ah, sorry. If I would have thought about it I'd have known it (only
>> two UMTS carriers show up on my phone, but there's more than two
>> mobile carriers), but I'm kind of fixated on UMTS in Japan since that
>> is the only phone I have which works there.
>
> I bet the roaming charges are horrendous. It's a lot cheaper to rent a
> USIM from Softbank at the airport (105 yen/day + call charges) if you have
> an unlocked UMTS 2100 capable phone. Softbank and the other carriers will
> also rent a phone if you want to do that.

Roaming isn't so bad now. I have in the past roamed there with
a Hong Kong SIM, at about $1/minute incoming, but my Celtrek SIM costs
24 cents/minute incoming, with a US inbound number (compared to 12 or 15
cents/minute to forward US calls to a Japan mobile).

I didn't know you could just rent the SIM, thanks for that. When I
asked before (a while ago now) they always wanted 800 or 1000 yen per day
for a phone which, since I've never stayed more than a day or two, was
beyond my cost/convenience threshold. If I stay for a while I'll
consider that (the outbound call rates are a bit silly though).

Dennis Ferguson

In alt.cellular.attws John Navas <spamfilter1 DeleteThis @navasgroup.com> wrote:
>
> Yep. CDMA has been in serious decline, and this will tend to accelerate
> the process, leaving Verizon increasingly isolated on a shrinking CDMA
> island, probably why Verizon shares dropped much more than AT&T shares.
> The bet by AT&T on GSM and 3G looks has been paying off well, and
> beating out Verizon for the iPhone has made it the strongest player in
> the U.S. market.
>

Alltel is making some pretty good inroads and may largely pick up the slack
from Sprint ... especially if they start selling assets.

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse

Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
-- Frank Tyger

Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:
> In alt.cellular.attws John Navas <spamfilter1 DeleteThis @navasgroup.com> wrote:
>> Yep. CDMA has been in serious decline, and this will tend to accelerate
>> the process, leaving Verizon increasingly isolated on a shrinking CDMA
>> island, probably why Verizon shares dropped much more than AT&T shares.
>> The bet by AT&T on GSM and 3G looks has been paying off well, and
>> beating out Verizon for the iPhone has made it the strongest player in
>> the U.S. market.
>>
>
> Alltel is making some pretty good inroads and may largely pick up the slack
> from Sprint ... especially if they start selling assets.

In my world travels, I see more and more CDMA networks across Asia, in
countries where there are already established GSM networks. In
percentage terms, CDMA has been increasing its worldwide market share.
However if and when Australia allows CDMA to replaced by NextG, that
will be a blow to CDMA.

On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, Dennis Ferguson posted:
> If I look at the GSM Association
> and CDMA Development Group numbers, at the beginning of 2001 there were
> 420 million GSM/3GSM (that's what they call it) and 85 million
> CDMAOne/CDMA2000 subscribers. In the fall of 2007 there were 2.57 billion
> xGSM subscribers and 425 million CDMAx subscribers (with a total world
> mobile market of 3.3 billion; 8% use something else).

Put another way, CDMA has a comparative market share of 16% of the
combined GSM+UMTS+CDMA market in 2007 vs. 20% in 2001.

Although UMTS is a 3G GSM successor rather than a CDMA successor, the fact
remains that it uses CDMA technology (hence the other name, W-CDMA).

I think that it is still entirely too soon to declare CDMA dead. Far more
likely is a what Verizon and Vodafone have already announced; a fusion of
effort towards LTE in 4G as opposed to UMB, and thus rendering the
question moot.

> I think it isn't the only one. Telefonica in Mexico shut down their
> CDMA network last year

There are still three other CDMA carriers in Mexico. Telefonica only had
a 2G network.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

How will that be a blow to CDMA? Your response doesn't make sense to me.

> In my world travels, I see more and more CDMA networks across Asia, in
> countries where there are already established GSM networks. In percentage
> terms, CDMA has been increasing its worldwide market share. However if and
> when Australia allows CDMA to replaced by NextG, that will be a blow to
> CDMA.

In alt.cellular.attws John Navas <spamfilter1 DeleteThis @navasgroup.com> wrote:
>>CDMA-2000. The future is indeed bright for CDMA!
>
> Nope. CMDA-2000 and W-CDMA are totally different.
>

They are both based on CDMA technology and are much closer to each other in
implementation then GSM is to either of them. GSM itself will go away IMHO,
but not anytime soon.

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse

Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
-- Frank Tyger

In alt.cellular.attws John Navas <spamfilter1.RemoveThis@navasgroup.com> wrote:
>>> in North America, with well over 50% of subscribers.
>>
>>Unless my math is really screwed up that statistic is just wrong. Where
>>did it come from?
>
> He's wrong, of course, but still desperately clinging to his forecast
> that Verizon and Sprint will take over the U.S. market.
>

Nah ... I think he said CDMA based technology is the way of the future. AT&T
is already using it in their data networks and my supposition is that in the
not to distant future voice networks will be legacy and we will all have
mobile phones that are really voice over data similar to VoIP today. The
analogy might be to make every handset EVDO only and run a VoIP client on it
connected to a phone number via SIP. AT&T and all the rest will move foward,
and depending on technological evolution, it will be more expensive for some
than for others. But, the OP is most likely correct, the future are
technologies based on CDMA.

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse

Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
-- Frank Tyger

In alt.cellular.attws SMS <scharf.steven DeleteThis @geemail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm sure that John is well aware that Sprint's current problems are
> totally unrelated to CDMA. They paid a huge premium for Nextel, because
> of Nextel's high ARPU, and thought they could convert all those Nextel
> iDEN customers into Sprint customers. Instead, those customers fled to
> other carriers.
>
> OTOH, Verizon and Alltel's success in terms of being the top quality
> networks in the U.S., _is_ partly related to using CDMA which is able to
> provide better coverage and fewer dropped calls. The financial success
> of Verizon Wireless is very much tied to their lower capital costs
> because even though CDMA infrastructure equipment is more expensive, you
> need fewer sites to cover the same area and fewer sites to provide
> equivalent capacity (compared with GSM). Even Cingular admitted this,
> and used it as an excuse for their poorer financial performance,
> claiming that once they completed build-out of their network that their
> margins would increase to close to Verizon's.

Think of how many times a Verizon caller makes a call and only one person can
hear the other, but not the reverse. Rarely. AT&T or T-Mobile ... MUCH more
frequent. I had a contract for a company out in Delano, MN. Signal from
SprintPCS was almost non-existant. AT&T was alright in the parking lot due to
the lower cellular frequency they use ... Verizon was great (one to two "bars"
throughout the building). T-Mobile was MAX bars. Why? Because they managed
to make a deal with T-Mobile to put an antenna right on top of the building in
exchange for making it their "company mobile phone network". Everybody there
carried a T-Mobile phone. Do you know how many times that I heard, "Can you
hear me?" or "I can't hear you!" Too many to count. I don't know why
exactly, but apparently GSM uses different channels for each direction of
audio and one gets broken. The whole time I was there, I didn't have that
problem with Sprint PCS (or when it roamed to Verizon if I was lucky) or with
my Verizon phone [after I switched from Sprint PCS].

The only person with AT&T there that could get signal in the building without
standing at a window, was using TDMA (of course, it was Cingular then, but his
phone said AT&T

Personally, I think CDMA to be the superior technology without doubt. The
problem only is that it is encumbered by patents from Qualcomm [they are evil]
and GSM is much older and was more entrenched in Europe and elsewhere before
CDMA saw the light of day in the American, Japanaese and Korean landscapes.

For me, I simply use what works best, reguardless of the technology, but it
happens to be Verizon Wireless here in Minnesota.

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse

Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
-- Frank Tyger

In alt.cellular.attws Ness-Net <no.richard RemoveThis @damnspam.nessnet.com> wrote:
> John, up to your old tricks again I see......
>
> Let me give you a hint...... then do your homework.
>
> N E X T E L
>
> is where most of the problems are - (which isn't "CDMA")......
>
>

They thought they could convert Nextel over to CDMA and that their
push-to-talk would be a mature replacement for it. It was not the case. So,
not all Nextel people who moved on, went to Sprint and that is why they are
losing on Nextel. I think their goal is to shut of iDen, perhaps swap
spectrum and then bring up the new spectrum for data. It doesn't seem to be
going their way.

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse

Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
-- Frank Tyger

In alt.cellular.attws Paul Miner <pminer RemoveThis @elrancho.invalid> wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:13:41 GMT, "Uno" <Uno RemoveThis @Max.com> wrote:
>
>>Did Nextel take over Sprint?
>
> No. At the time, it was called a merger of equals, but I think most
> people will agree that Sprint acquired Nextel.
>

And it is Sprint Nextel ... not Nextel Sprint.

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse

Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
-- Frank Tyger

In alt.cellular.attws Steve Sobol <sjsobol.RemoveThis@justthe.net> wrote:
>
>> Yep. CDMA has been in serious decline
>
> Were you ever a Sprint customer? I was, 2000-2005 for my wife's phone
> and 2004-2005 for both phones. The biggest problem at Sprint wasn't the
> network.
>

Yeah ... you got that right!

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse

Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
-- Frank Tyger