Jeez....You shoulda been a systems engineer.
Excessive, but not unappreciated. . .
Thanks for your answer, it's good to know I wasn't far off, the disagreements on the thread were cutting into my confidence. It appears that the confusion mostly revolves around mixing technical issues with political, economic and business issues.
Note that also if they have GSM in the phone and WCDMA in the phone, they would cover just about all the air interfaces around. Adding UMTS would guarantee that they would make a call (technically speaking again) anywhere in the world.
Though technically this makes sense, and would create a future oriented world phone, it seems to me that such a phone would have a very small audience. Qualcomm seems with GSM1x to be giving carriers a cheaper, lower risk way from GSM all the way to 3G, but that 3G would be CDMA2000 not WCDMA, since there is a good upgrade from 1x to CDMA2000 but not for 1x to WCDMA. Thus, what carrier would want this presumably more expensive phone which would offer capabilities that the carrier wouldn't need, and would only help their competitors who chose a different route to 3G.
Now for the last sticking point.
You can use your Visa Card almost ANYWHERE in the world without any kind of giant check or barrier. Why can't carriers allow worldwide roaming from a billing and acceptance point of view? Why are we in the dark ages for this, when the wireline guys have gotten it right (hint: has to do with a few court rulings FORCING the wireline guys to do it..).
Yes, it seems a good role for the FCC to make sure that 1, the common carriers cooperate to the betterment of the general population as a general condition for using the public airwaves, and 2, to make sure that companies are not penalized for doing so.
In a thought experiment, imagine a world in which roaming was enforced and was cheap. I, or better a company with a strong brand, could go into business with my own phone company, ALWAYS roam, and not have to do anythng but gather customers and bill them. I don't know how to balance this out, but I do agree with you that we'll all be better off if they cooperate. Then again, we'd be better off if competitors in every business cooperated more than they do today but that limits the ability to benefit from one's creativity and one's ability to turn it into a viable product.
We both, I think, wouldn't want to see this "cooperation is good for the general public" philosophy carried very far, or the US would have gone the way of Europe and there would not be a CDMA and 3G would be in the hands of the GSM crowd.
Plenty to think about. |
