USTR Critical Of Japanese TD-CDMA Licensing 184
News for nerds writes "Yahoo Asia reports that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) said in its annual report that the Japanese government has so far refused to issue experimental licenses to certain U.S. companies to test the new TD-CDMA technology. It attacks China and S. Korea along the line. The funny thing is, according to Impress Internet Watch, the Japanese government states that no U.S. companies had actually applied for the license so far. ITmedia also reports the Japanese government didn't deny foreign application, while criticizing the government for too narrow bandwidth of TD-CDMA that can be monopolized easily. Is this the precursor of another wave of pressure onto technology from Japan?"
That's it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's it! (Score:4, Funny)
new TD-CDMA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:5, Informative)
The standard mentioned in the article is a mix of TDMA and CDMA. It uses CDMA in a half-duplex fashion, with transmission lengths limited to predefined time slots.
CDMA is superior (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, forgot, here is the link (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Oh, forgot, here is the link (Score:4, Insightful)
It should be possible to mod a link down. This Skytel page is the most blatent pseudo-scientific propaganda I have come around in a long time.
How can true nerds accept a phrase like: "Well in this page we do not see a need of detailed explanation of technical specifications of CDMA and GSM, which, frankly, few of us really can understand." What an insult to the readers intelligence. There is nothing complicated about cellular telephony that people who know what they are talking about cannot explain to folks with basic high school physics background.
However, CDMA technology checks 800 times per second its transmission level. Therefore, radiation level is 10 times less than AMPS and GSM. Smart, isn't it?
The output power levels have nothing to do with the speed of the power control loop. GSM and CDMA2k alike adjusts the output power according to the signal quality at the base-station, GSM transmits in short bursts, CDMA2k transmits continuously, the average power is comparable and in a well covered network with small cells boths systems will transmit power far below the max power level anyway.
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:3, Informative)
Ok. That might be a good point, but is the capacity significantly (50%+) higher?
has lower radiation levels.
Completely irrelevant. Cell phone radiation intensity is already miniscule compared to the ambient radiation we receive from space and our surroundings.
Furthermore, one can show almost with high school physics that even if the intensities were much higher, the radiation from cell phones CANNOT disrupt biological systems.
Energy is carried by photons. If the
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:3, Informative)
Completely irrelevant. Cell phone radiation intensity is already miniscule compared to the ambient radiation we receive from space and our surroundings.
I'm quite sure you're incorrect on this point. For all intents and purposes, you can consider a cell phone to be a point source -- intensity of radiation varies with the inverse of the cube of the distance from the source. Background radiation is almost by definition the same everywhere. You're not going to see anywhere near the equivalent of a 200mW micr
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry but this is bullshit! I don't think mobile phones produce "coherent" microwaves, they're not masers after all.
I believe what's meant here, from further reading on the web, is that the "coherence" component is the modulation frequency. For instance, most cell phones will transmit in bursts, then shut off for a few milliseconds, then transmit again. The frequency of this (if regular) is very similar in action to ELF radiation, which is proven to cause all sorts of problems. CDMA, as the article says,
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:1)
Is there any evidence to support what you're saying?
The frequency of this (if regular) is very similar in action to ELF radiation, which is proven to cause all sorts of problems.
What kind of problems? What is the proposed mechanism by which this can affect biological processes? Proven by who? Proven how?
there is a frequency component of the microwaves emitted by cell phones which is very close in frequency to the frequency of some biological process
What's a frequency component - if they're microwave
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:2, Informative)
OK, basically this is what I've read. I don't go to stupid conspiracy theorist sites to get my info (because they're full of shit) -- I try to gather as much of it as I can from the published literature. And no, I don't quote things if they don't come from a reasonably reputable source.
As to what kind of problems, etc, read the WHO paper again -- it's fully referenced, so if you're determined you can go and look up the papers referenced. That would answer the "proven by who" and "proven how" questions. It
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:5, Informative)
Not just 50%, but several orders of magnitude higher.
GSM 56Kbps
CDMA2000 2Mbps
how do you think the japanese stream live video on their phones?
the radiation level is 10x less than AMPS and GSM. while as you say the amount we get is already very small, but this isn't just cutting it in half, it's several orders lower.
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:2)
> CDMA2000 2Mbps
Uh, at least compare CDMA2000 to its contemporary, UMTS. Suddenly you're not talking "orders of magnitude" anymore. And they've both got about the same pathetic level of deployment.
Re:Agreed. (Score:2)
> of already-deployed sites and phones that are using the
> older standard
I'd say it's mostly the infrastructure, not so much the phones. People seem to be upgrading their phones reflexively every year anyway. Regarding infrastructure upgrades, I'd say a not insignificant part of the cost is upgrading the back-end lines to support the higher bandwidth, and that cost should be similar for both UMTS and CDMA2000.
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:3, Informative)
Not just 50%, but several orders of magnitude higher.
GSM 56Kbps
CDMA2000 2Mbps
As others have allready mentioned that is not a meaningfull comparison. With GSM Phase 2+ you have a max data rate of 384 kb/s (EDGE) and with Phase 3 you have 2Mb/s with the UTRAN (W-CDMA) air interface and 384 kb/s with the GERAN (EDGE) air interface.
Both are likely to be furter developed in future GSM standards releases.
You have to look at what you can get out of your handsets and datacards today with comparable cost, cov
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:5, Informative)
I forgot to complain about the parent posts claim regarding radiation level:
the radiation level is 10x less than AMPS and GSM. while as you say the amount we get is already very small, but this isn't just cutting it in half, it's several orders lower.
The main difference is that with CDMA2k you have continuous transmission, with GSM and GSM EDGE you have bursted transmission with a duty cycle of 12.5% for full rate and 6.25% for half-rate voice codecs.
For 2W peak power you would be down to 250mW or 125mW max power when you consider the duty cycle. What is important is the energy pr. bit, and that is not that different between the two systems.
Also you are not likely to transmit at full power neither in CDMA2k nor in GSM. The basestation will continuously monitor the signal strength from the mobile and command it to reduce transmitted power until the S/N at the basestation is just sufficient for decoding. This improves the spectrum efficiency by allowing faster frequency re-use and it improves your handsets battery life as well.
One problem in CDMA is that the basestation needs to transmit the same power level to all handsets, it can not reduce the transmitted power to handsets with good reception. One bozo with aluminium foil over the antenna will force the basestation to increase transmitted power to all handsets. In GSM the basestation would only need to boost power to the one bozo, not to all the other users. This can damage the spectrum efficiency of CDMA based systems in down-link.
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:1)
> Completely irrelevant.
Well, I guess that you don't care about battery life, or range (in large cells) or any of those things, then. You do know that phones can put out up to 2 watts, which is a pretty hefty drain on a small battery. It's also very non-trivial to make a 2 watt amplifier that works in the GHz range.
Attitudes like that will do the same things to phones as have happened to PCs. You'll be able to buy the 4G MeatCooker 3000, capable of outputting 6Kw (nee
Re:CDMA is superior (Score:2)
Eh? Do you mean current cellphones, or all cellphones in general? I have used two NEC 21" monitors for the past 5-7 years. Up until the last change in phones (CDMA, GSM, who knows), everytime one of those damned Nokia's rang my monitor would act like it was degaussing. I don't know if that was when they switched from analog to digital or whatever,
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:1)
You misunderstand. UMTS isn't exactly a radio standard, more a collection of standards that give approximately similar performance. Currently, those are TD-CDMAand W-CDMA. W-CDMA is deployed more or lessd everywhere, because it is simpler to implement, but some countries
Re: (Score:1)
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:2, Funny)
The dyslexic among us would rather be rid of the DMCA. Alphabet soup is so fun.
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:5, Informative)
Supperior is a question of opinion. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:5, Informative)
Even so, GSM has withstood the test of time. Some companies in the USA tried to build their own competing systems (using the same radio protocol, TDMA), but they paled in comparison to GSM. Even many CDMA implementations (ie, Sprint, Verizon) have lagged seriously behind GSM's featureset, despite being based on a better radio protocol. Today, CDMA implementations have surpassed GSM capabilities in many areas (wireless data throughput comes to mind), but until I see Verizon using SIM chips, it is safe to say that GSM isn't going anywhere.
The next generation of mobile technology will simply be improvements to GSM concepts. We'll hopefully continue the trend of network standardization with a solid featureset and a SIM-like identity mechanism, but with an upgraded (CDMA-based) radio protocol.
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:2)
> with a solid featureset and a SIM-like identity mechanism,
> but with an upgraded (CDMA-based) radio protocol.
UMTS, the completely mismanaged and seriously pre- and overhyped successor to GSM, is based on W-CDMA.
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:4, Insightful)
The CDMA radio interface or physical layer is better then the TDMA layer that GSM uses. From some courses I took, it worked out that CDMA allows for about 5 times the capitity on the same bandwidth that GSM/TDMA allows, that's the practical limitation.
But the software layer for link and control layers is a MESS, a true and undisguised mess. Now I haven't seen GSM or W-CDMA's link and control layer, but nothing can be as bad as CDMAs link and control layers. This is because there are ten different protocol revisions from JSTD.0008 to IS-2000 Revision C. I don't know how bad GSM->W-CDMA is, but W-CDMA's physical layer is not backwards compatible with GSM so it doesn't have the problem of backwards compatibility that CDMA requires.
TD-CDMA is a completely different beast of course. I think is the same as TD-SCDMA that China has come up with, which seems to be a mash of CDMA, W-CDMA, SCDMA, and a few others. But it uses the W-CDMA messaging and control with some modifications.
Alot of the reasons that people use to claim that GSM is better then CDMA is based on it being an older technology, with 10 more years of development behind it. 10 years gives you smaller/cheeper chips which provides cheeper products. It also allows for ten more years of applications and add-on developments. And of course the APIs between CDMA and GSM are different so you can't port that across easily. And 10 years gives you a lot of market penitration.
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:2)
About the quality of CDMA services being low - I'd say that it's a problem with the implementation, not the technology as such since I know from experience that CDMA is a brilliant concept that uses spread-spectrum tech (which has some great properties of being immune to a large amount of noise etc - your low power gps receivers also use a similar system).
Of course, it would be great if implementations of CDMA used SIM cards (or something similar) instead of locking a mobile unit with
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:2)
> So CDMA is definitely not on its way out.
And guess that's based on W-CDMA? That's right, UMTS, the successor to GSM. Let's compare the latest in both camps, shall we? As someone else said, GSM is much more than a PHY specification, it's an entire cellular architecture. It can grow with the times and adopt the latest technologies for its various components without invalidating the rest of its standards.
What you have to realize is that when GSM
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:1)
Be careful with your use of terms, there. The military uses CDMA in the sense that they use spread spectrum with codes defining the channels, but military systems are almost universally frequency-
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:2)
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:2, Insightful)
GSM is old. I believe the standard was set in something like 1982. The first networks started appearing around 1990.
All new systems that I know of use variations on CDMA.
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:2, Interesting)
Everything in radio is old. Spread spectrum was patented in the 40's, FM in the 30's, and the principles of TDMA were worked out by Nyquist and his cohorts in Bell Labs in the 20's. Huffman coded digital data? Introduced (albeit in primitive form) by Samuel Morse. Even the "advanced" modulation formats being proposed these days are pretty much straightforward implementations of coding theories developed by Claude Shannon & his comtemporaries in the 50's
What's new is cheap silicon to st
Re:new TD-CDMA (Score:1)
Lawrence Lessig and spectrum regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawrence Lessig has quite a convincing argument for 'freeing' spectrum- in short (and not giving it the justice it deserves- he says it better in 'The Future of Ideas'), a lack of regulation (both legal and 'structural' regulation- i.e. the internet isn't structurally regulated whereas the phone system is, being centrally regulated) worked absolute wonders for the Internet. If the internet wasn't end-to-end and open, it'd be a shadow of what it is now.
So, basically, he believes that the spectrum is a medium which could be much like the internet, given protocols and standards that allowed things to connect using it.
As something somewhat like the internet would be much more useful than something like the phone system in the long run, I think the real news here, rather than there being a US-Japan spectrum spat, is that countries are squabbling over how to miserly regulate the spectrum in the first place.
RD
Re:Lawrence Lessig and spectrum regulation (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not so easy to shield myself from radiowaves and connect to some other network using some other protocol if I want to. If my neighbour uses protocol X to connect to A, he may block me to connect to B using protocol Y; chances are that me trying and failing, will block him too.
I.e. the less "directed" nature of a large part of the spectrum does require at least some regulation. I don't say that the current policies are OK, however no regulation at all will lead to chaos, not to speak of health risks for strong fields in some frequencies.
An intermediate and reasonable form of regulation might be to mandate adherence to certain well behaved protocols, but allow anyone as long as they do not violate the protocols to use the (part of the) spectrium freely.
Re:Lawrence Lessig and spectrum regulation (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with the spectrum is that if you don't state clearly what and where you transmit, it becomes a chaos of interferences. It has to be regulated to be useful.
Another example is the US-european models of mobile/cell telephony, where the strong european regulation (mandatory GSM) in fact allowed a stronger market; in that example you al
Re:Lawrence Lessig and spectrum regulation (Score:2, Interesting)
Rather than have the authorities tell us what we can use each band for, tell us what protocol to use, and let us figure out what to use them for.
Wider, fatter open spectrum... look what has been done so far in 2.4Ghz ISM. and it's a SHITTY piece of spectrum.
Open up some real specttrum, set teh access standards, but don't tell us what to use it FOR.. and then we'll get somewhere.
Re:Lawrence Lessig and spectrum regulation (Score:2)
No, it's not like GSM. In Europe you can only use GSM, in the bands allocated for GSM. And that was good for the market, everyone knew which game to play, unlike the US where multiple standards "rule".
Rather than have the authorities tell us what we can use each band for, tell us what protocol to use, and let us figure out what to use them for.
You can't use every protocol in every band, and the authorities do well saying w
am i the only one? (Score:1, Redundant)
So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan must feel like how I did in Civ2. I was always so far ahead of the rest of the nations because I focused on developing technology while the rest of the world was more interested in building up their militaries.
Re:So what? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:So what? (Score:2)
So that they can oppress the Sunnis and Kurds, and ally Iraq with Iran? Great plan.
Re:So what? (Score:1)
Rap names (Score:1)
Re:So what? (Score:1)
I'd think this funny if I didn't know you meant it...
Re:So what? (Score:1)
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
So it wasn't really that they depended on a US army to protect them but that they were not allowed to have one. After they had been doing this for a few decades and become one of the leading countries in the process I assmume they discovered that it was quite a lot better to have a lot of research and tech instead of a military so why stop doing it?
Re:So what? (Score:2)
Say what, fool?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&c
Have we been here before? (Score:5, Informative)
I seem to recall a similar debate [slashdot.org] over the U.S.'s attempt to push the use of CDMA at the expense of of GSM in Iraq.
The words pot and kettle come to mind
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, but that was then (when we all imagined a groovy peaceful Iraq starting a domino effect of democratisation across the Arab world), And this is now, when I can't see the mobile phone market in Iraq being very relevant for the next few years.
This is more akin to how the US has berated china over keeping its currency artifically low against the Dollar [channelnewsasia.com], while doing the same thing to Europe.
Or the Way the US has slammed the EU's fine against Microsoft as the 'opening shot of a trade war', [delawareonline.com] While ignoring its own illegal subsidies and tariffs which have been in place for years.
The saying was, 'war is an extension of politics by other means', Today it has an addition of... " And, Politics is an extension of economics by other means".
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:1)
This is more akin to how the US has berated china over keeping its currency artifically low against the Dollar, while doing the same thing to Europe.
Lol.
Yes, it's another clever U.S. strategy of creating massive debt, political instability and dodgy markets to drive the dollar down vs. the euro.
Do you see any fundamental reason to be long dollars right now? No? Then why do you need a conspiracy to explain it?
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:2)
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:2, Funny)
I think in the future GWBush will be remembered as alot of terrible things, one of which will be "the man who made the euro."
As if Britain didn't have enough reasons to hate him.
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that would mean serious problems for the US economy. Serious enough to start a war, in fact.
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:3, Funny)
You mean ANOTHER one?!
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:2)
Why is that, exactly? If the US dollar gained strength after the switch, then the US is fat and happy. Is it the new instability of the price of oil that would screw the US? Or a domino effect of other investors switching to the Euro? Or something else?
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:2)
The situation could snowball if the dollar loses too much value,
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:2)
Mobile Equipment rules in Iraq! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:2)
How has the US done this to Europe? China and Japan keep their currencies artificially low by buying up American bonds, thereby driving up the price for dollar denominated assets and lowering the cost of yuan/yen-denominated assets to Americans. America plays no such game on the European asset market.
Explanation, please.
BushMire (Score:2)
If you believed that Iraq would be groovy, you'll believe that Japan is keeping the US tech sector down with these fake TD-CDMA "obstructions". The only skill BushCo has got is political scams. The sooner they're out of the way, the sooner we can get a manager in office who won't stick his monkey finger into the business of engineers and business developers.
Re:Have we been here before? (Score:2)
IT'S A COMMIE PLOT (Score:3, Funny)
A little Jargon explaining (Score:5, Informative)
GSM: Global System for Mobile communications - an advanced technology based on TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). Here you need different frequencies in adjacent cells. Usually a cluster of cells is used with each cell operating at a different frequency.
Some more info [rr.com]
Air interface is about 10% of the spec (Score:3, Insightful)
It is the fact that GSM stresses interopera
They never applied??? (Score:2, Insightful)
CDMA vs. GSM (Score:5, Informative)
CDMA may be a marvelous technology, but it has the unfortunate liability that the service that it delivers to the customer is ridiculously second-rate when compared with GSM. I have used cell phones in the US, and I must say that they are uniformly awful when compared with the GSM system in Europe, for example.
Re:CDMA vs. GSM (Score:1)
really??? I'd like to hear how good GSM sounds, becuase i use my 3G CDMA cell phone here in japan, and it sounds better then any land line i ever heard in america. the sound quality is as though the person is just right there infront of you... i'm not saying you're wrong, i'm just saying that if you're right, then GSM has unimaginable good sound quality
CDMA in Japan is GSM (Score:4, Interesting)
Incidentally, in many parts of the world straight TDMA GSM gives better quality than land-lines because of the digital nature of the network.
Re:CDMA vs. GSM (Score:1)
3g voice quality is certainly good though, honestly I've never found old style tdma gsm to be noticably bad for plain voice (in the UK that is, can't comment on elsewhere).
Re:CDMA vs. GSM (Score:1, Insightful)
You are confusing the quality of the technology with the quality of a cellphone company's network. I find European GSM quality much better than US GSM quality.
CDMA is a better technology than GSM.
Re:CDMA vs. GSM (Score:2)
CDMA the transmission system is better than that which is used in old GSM systems. However newer GSM systems use CDMA for transmission (this is 3G). CDMA the phone system is inferior to GSM the phone system (less features and lower voice quality).
Even though I'm actually kind of in the mobile industry I still find all these standards confusing.
Wikipedia to the rescue, start off at the CD [wikipedia.org]
Re:CDMA vs. GSM (Score:2)
No, GSM is not better than CDMA, it is different. Both have advantages and disadvantages.
As a over the air protocol CDMA is better than TDMA (which is what GSM uses over the air).
As a standard overall, GSM is better due to things like the SIM card which let you switch phones easily. However CDMA has a few features that GSM would be better to have, like the ability to tell your phone to turn on the new voice mail waiting signal. SMS to say you have voice mail works, but either you delete it without ch
SIM tied to phone? (Score:1)
As a standard overall, GSM is better due to things like the SIM card which let you switch phones easily.
I thought most mobile phone service providers tied the SIM card to the phone for business model reasons. If nobody implements this SIM swapping, what good is it?
Re:SIM tied to phone? (Score:2)
Not on any system I know of. The SIM card is yours, but tied to a network. (AFAIK switching providers means you get a new SIM card, but now a days you keep your phone number) The phones themselves are tied to providers, but only until you pay for them. I have used the same SIM card in 5 different phones, and never contacted my provider. The last time I was at the providers office and they tested my sim by putting it in their phone, but they hadn't yet looked at the computer leading me to believe tha
Re:SIM tied to phone? (Score:2)
Not on any system I know of. The SIM card is yours, but tied to a network. (AFAIK switching providers means you get a new SIM card, but now a days you keep your phone number) The phones themselves are tied to providers, but only until you pay for them. I have used the same SIM card in 5 different phones, and never contacted my provider. The last time I was at the providers office and they tested my sim by putting it in their phone, but they hadn't yet looked at the computer leading me to belive that
Re:SIM tied to phone? (Score:3, Informative)
You can still take your SIM and use it in any unrestricted GSM phone.
It's not like open GSM phones are hard to find either.. basically every cellular shop is
Re:CDMA vs. GSM (Score:1)
An extension to GSM, called CPHS, has this feature.
Re:CDMA vs. GSM (Score:1)
The telephone towers for CDMA seem give around 10 Kms of radius coverage. GSM towers around 2-3.Unless the equipment in the towers are radically different the price ratio you quoted should be correct.
But there is no difference in sound quality wrt delays or "dropped packets" in GSM vs CDMA (I had a nokia 5510 on GSM which sounded better than the LGRD 2030 phone I have now but that is just the speakers -5510 had an mp3 player) . Plus accessing the net on a GSM ph
If there was ever... (Score:1)
If there was ever a thread where it would be "ok" to threadjack, this would be it.
US = Unbelievably Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
What the US is pushing is a CDMA system that doesn't communicate with anything else, which is being pushed by Qualcomm (and their senators). CDMA should provide a much better overall quality and spectrum of possible services, unfortunately in the US it doesn't. This is becase the air spec is just a small part of it.
The fun thing is that GSM Phase 3 means that some Qualcomm poatents must be licensed so they are still being paid for the technology.
Re:US = Unbelievably Stupid (Score:1)
In a free, non-controlled market, the only way WCDMA/UMTS can compete is through government-regulation, like, say, banning 1x CDMA providers. There's also a lot to be said for the fact that 3G CDMA like EV-DO and EV-DV have been shown to be faster than UMTS and friends. Combine this with
Driving on the right in Japan.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep, there is much more overhead in GSM because it does more. Qualcomm frankly make me sick because although they developed CDMA for mobile equipment and promoted it aggressively, they forgot that an air-protocol doesn't make a complete system. Implement a fraction of the protocol and everything is faster, but its better
Re:US = Unbelievably Stupid (Score:2)
Been somewhere similar before (Score:5, Informative)
WAP never sold well, and people were never convinced of it's merits. End of story - it was superceeded by 3G and ahem, 2.5G. Kind of.
The fact was that imode could never be sold in Europe because the WAP consortium had outlawed packet switching technologies with respective governments' help. Thus the infrastructure was labelled expensive and proprietary (which is exactly what WAP was anyway), and was prevented from being implemented.
The WAP consortium was formed with the expressed purpose of keeping Japanese technology out of Europe and the US, and so we can see the same thing happening here - the Japanese develop a superior technology, so US and European carriers seek to refuse it entry to the market.
Worth remembering next time you go into a mobile phone shop and think "Why hasn't the technology here improved much in the last 5 years?"
I-mode is available in Germany (Score:3, Interesting)
The WAP consortium was only seeking a way to get html down a low-bandwith traditional style connection as that is what is available in most of Europe. GPRS (already deployed) and later UMTS make this redundant.
Re:This is because... (Score:1, Funny)
N T S C
Off topic but interesting (Score:1)
I recall that CDMA phones do not have SIM cards and the subscriber number is hardwired into the phone.
Also if you save all your phone numbers on the SIM card, moving to a new phone is as easy as moving your SIM card to the new phone (although with the added functionality of h
SIM card is part of the GSM standrad (Score:2)
What I like is that although roaming can cost serious money (20% of outgoing call costs), it is often possible to buy a local SIM card and use the system at local rates. You can then setup a redirect from your old number to the new local number.
Re:Just what (Score:1, Interesting)