Subject: [NEXTEL-1] GSM vs CDMA: Does it matter in Iraq?

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 13:49:12 -0400

GSM vs CDMA: Does it matter in Iraq?

By Rupert Goodwins, Special to ZDNet
08 April 2003

COMMENTARY--The fighting's far from over, so why are people blustering about
cellphone standards in the reconstruction to come?
It is hard to think of the future of
Iraq when the present is so
harrowing. The war may be
cowboys versus gangsters,
imperialism versus indigenous
people, Christianity versus Islam,
democracy versus tyranny,
freedom versus oppression. It'll
be the job of history to put things
in context, and we must hope for a
world where history is allowed to
tell the truth. For now, the proper
wish is for a quick ending.

So writing about
telecommunications standards in
post-war Iraq seems almost
criminally trivial. It would be the
thought furthest from my mind
were it not for United States
Congressman Darrell Issa, who a
couple of weeks ago circulated a
lobbying letter to Congress entitled "Parlez-vous français?". In it, the
charming politician pointed out that GSM stood for Groupe Systeme Mobile, and
thus was obviously developed by the French (it wasn't, as he later corrected).
In the rebuilding of Iraq, he continued, it was important that such nastiness be
avoided and the contracts for the mobile phone system be awarded to CDMA, the
American digital phone standard.
It is easy to attack this sort of posturing on grounds of taste, sanity and
special interests, so let's get the cheap shots in first. It was excruciatingly
tasteless to bluster on about cellphones with thousands dying and thousands yet
to die. The sanity of any country where French fries are renamed Freedom Fries
is questionable (although our own dear royal family renamed themselves the House
of Windsor in the First World War, as Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was thought to be a bit,
well, Germanic. I would not hold them up as icons of sanity). As for special
interests: Congressman Issa is the recipient of thousands of dollars of campaign
funding from Qualcomm, the company that in effect owns the CDMA standard. But
even so, is there some basis of fact in his claim?
As you'd expect from a standard around ten years younger, CDMA has some
technological advantages over GSM. You can cram more calls into the same chunk
of spectrum, it's more resistant to noise and it handles congestion better. If
there were no mobile phones on the planet and there was a competition on purely
technical merit, CDMA would most likely win. But there are, there isn't, and it
won't.
Take a marketing perspective. CDMA has around 12 percent of the global market,
GSM nearly 70.  This has certain implications: there are many more models of GSM
phones than there are CDMA, and the best features appear on GSM first (and
sometimes stay there). Every country in Europe and the Middle East is on GSM,
and roaming between operators and countries is a fact of life. Take a GSM phone
to America, and you have a good chance of it working. Try doing it in reverse
with CDMA.
It's analogous to the world of PCs in the early 90s. The IBM PC standard was no
beauty--there were plenty of alternatives that worked better and did more with
less, at least as far as the hardware and operating system went. But it was
open--there were lots of manufacturers and software companies on the scene,
prices were low and availability was high. A vigorous market developed, and soon
it didn't matter how much better the alternatives were--they'd be stuck in
niches. For what people wanted computers to do, the PC had the best answer. It
would be unthinkable for a country to mandate that only Macintoshes be allowed.
The analogy is close: Apple, like Qualcomm, kept a tight grasp on their
technology and only let others use it with ill-concealed bad grace, if at all.
If the main purpose of the reconstruction of Iraq is to give the country a firm
footing in reality and to equip it for life among the modern nations, then the
purpose of its mobile phone network must be to let as many people communicate as
cheaply as possible and with as few restrictions and as many benefits as
possible. This must include roaming with its neighbours, exposure to the
benefits of the best and liveliest market in both infrastructure and handsets,
and the chance for indigenous skills to develop with the best chance of being
useful in the world outside. On all these fronts, you can't knock GSM.
That none of these factors informed Congressman Issa's stance is indicative that
our old European suspicions concerning America's intentions may be worth holding
onto for a little longer. Once the war is over and we've counted all the weapons
of mass destruction, the test of what happens next is entirely "does it benefit
the Iraqis?". I'm sure that everybody on either side of the Atlantic looks
forward to the day when the biggest concern of a Baghdad schoolkid is which
mobile phone to get for their birthday. That, Mr Issa, is the only acceptable
standard for mobile communications in the rebuilt Iraq.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/enterprise/story/0,2000025001,20273518,00.htm

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