Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Which network--CDMA or GPRS? No easy answers

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 10:22:26 -0500

Which network--CDMA or GPRS? No easy answers
By David Berlind, Tech Update
January 12, 2003 3:15 PM PT

Microsoft's recent announcement that it has added CDMA support to the phone edition of
PocketPC is an important story to any corporate customer traveling the WAN upgrade road.

Microsoft's announcement makes it possible for manufacturers of PocketPC Phone
Edition-based
PDA/phones (like Samsung) to supply devices to operators of CDMA networks (like Sprint and

Verizon) in addition to the operators of GSM/GPRS networks (like T-Mobile and Cingular)
with
which PocketPC Phone Edition was already compatible. GSM handles voice, while GPRS
(General Packet Radio Service)handles data.

The cross network availability also broadens the target for developers of wireless
applications that
depend on a PocketPC based client. Prior to this announcement, if you or your company
depended on PocketPCs and you wanted to mobilize an application using PocketPC Phone
Edition, you only had one choice for a wide area data network: GPRS.

As a side note, Microsoft was late to the cross-network party. The PalmOS-powered Treo
PDA/phones from Handspring are already available for both networks. The other competition
to
Microsoft on the mobile operating system front --- Symbian (of which Nokia and Samsung are

licensees) --- also supports both networks.

Now that all three mobile operating systems support both voice/data networks, the next
question
facing corporate developers/users and consumers who didn't have to think about the network

before is: Which network?

To answer this and other questions, I contacted John Strand, of Copenhagen-based Strand
Consult, who recently authored a report that said GPRS has so far been a bigger flop than
WAP.

As it turns out, there's nothing wrong with GPRS -- at least nothing that we don't already
know.
Strand was referring to GPRS' as yet unfulfilled potential from the operator's side of the
equation.
But, for users, there are differences between the networks. For example, despite the
advertised
data rates of both networks, Strand notes, "most GPRS users are lucky if they get between
32
and 36 KBps. CDMA users are getting at least twice that--somewhere between 70 and 80
KBps." This corroborates some positive feedback I've heard about the performance of
Sprint's
PCS network when compared to the GPRS-based alternatives.

Simply because CDMA is going twice as fast as GPRS, and exciting services like Sprint's
video
phone look, well, exciting, doesn't mean that we should all run to CDMA, says Strand.
Since
pricing for similar bundles of voice and data from both camps are about the same, it would
seem
as though you get more bang for your buck from CDMA.

But Strand advises users to consider other criteria before making a decision.

"The most obvious one," says Strand, "is coverage. Going with CDMA won't be very helpful
if
most of your people are running around in area that doesn't have very good CDMA coverage."

The same goes for GPRS.

Assuming that you or "your people" run around in areas covered equally by both networks,
your
next consideration should be the applications you are running. Strand divides applications
into
three tiers: light, medium and heavy.

"Light applications" says Strand, "are ones like e-mail that don't require a lot of
bandwidth.
Medium apps are the type where you need real-time access to facts and figures and are
submitting
database queries and things of that nature. Heavy apps include streaming video clips,
working with
large images, or downloading big documents like PowerPoint or Word documents."

Either network will suffice for applications whose maximum bandwidth requirement falls
somewhere between medium and heavy, says Strand. But once you enter the world of heavy,
CDMA is your only choice. E-mail is pretty light, until you enter the world of Microsoft
Office and
PocketPC. Given PocketPC's support of documents created in Word and Excel (and similar
functionality that can be had on PalmOS and Symbian), we certainly aren't discouraged from

sending or receiving large documents. If your users like to take full advantage of a
mobile device's
capability to work with MS-Office documents, then CDMA certainly looks good on paper.

Value added by operators
Another area that Strand suggests looking into is the menu of value-added services
provided by
the mobile operator. Strand is particularly critical of American operators. "Whereas other

operators around the world will show you a road map for the additional services and APIs
that
they're going to make available over time, American operators are little more than dumb
ISPs," he
says. Leaving room for one or two innovative offerings like Sprint's Business Connection,
Strand
says, "for the most part, American operators offer two things--voice and data." It's no
wonder that
users and companies have no idea which way to go when choosing networks.

Strand points to South Korea as a country that has fully embraced a single infrastructure
(CDMA)
and where the operators are proactive about value-added services because they represent
the
biggest opportunity for additional revenue. The Korean operators also are keen on making
those
services available to third-party developers through APIs.

Provided the right APIs are available, a developer could write an application that allows
a phone
user to assign a voice or data transmission to a client's account, and integrate the
charges into a
billing system (regardless of where it is hosted). Sounds like a job for Web services.

That corresponds to the answers Microsoft gave me when I asked if PocketPC developers
needed any "IF-THEN-ELSE" statements in their source code to deal with network
dependencies. If that was the case, then understanding those network dependencies might
affect
the GPRS vs. CDMA decision. According to Microsoft's Jason Gordon, that depends on the
mobile operators and what APIs they make available to developers. Right now, says Gordon,
there's no difference. Like Symbian and Palm, PocketPC's equal access to both networks
will
help to level the playing field for developers. Eventually, if the operators do come up
with services
that they want to make available to developers, their best bet will be to work with the
operating
system providers to make sure that the APIs to those services are exposed in Software
Development Kits (SDKs).

Can mobile operators change their spots? Despite the glut of bandwidth, the
telecommunications
service providers (land and air) continue to overcharge for voice and data. Sooner or
later, if
public 802.11 networks don't come from nowhere and kill 3G altogether, that market dynamic
is
going to come back to haunt them. When it does, the operators that survive may very well
be the
ones that can transform themselves from pipe providers to platform providers. Who that
will be is
anyone's guess.

Unfortunately, this is one important data point that's tough to fill in if you are trying
to make an
informed decision today.

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2908462,00.html

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