<There is no decent international roaming for either IS-95 or cdma2000. And that in itself is lethal.>
Tero, there is ZERO roaming for W-CDMA. There will only be roaming to the GSM world if W-CDMA is created. DoCoMo's W-CDMA is NOT the same as the European version [as far as I know]. Therefore, they are building a niche market version, albeit a fairly decent niche market!
With cdma2000, there is instantly most of North and South America, big chunks of Asia and increasing places around the world. Backward compatible at that [with frequency variation only] and not even frequency variation for many systems.
Now, W-CDMA is going to be all new frequency and all new handsets and all new everything and needing to be multimode, and therefore inefficient and expensive with restricted roaming.
You are right, it's a profitability issue. Vodafone is a big gorilla and they will NOT want their profits reduced. They do indeed love the spectrum auction in the UK.
There is very big betting going on.
As they say, rumours of the death of cdma2000 are exaggerated.
Nokia will NOT want to be left behind. Ericy has left them at the altar, canoodling with Q! on all options.
Maurice |
