Despite about 8 years of trying to understand it, I still have no idea why any service provider or subscriber would prefer to use 3GSM/W-CDMA [nee VW-40] instead of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO. It costs more and runs half as fast! Which hardly seems a great marketing line to me.
I suppose there is some of the legacy GSM equipment which can be reused in the 3GSM/W-CDMA networks, but I'm not even sure that is true. But if so, that would save some capital cost.
But at 2GHz, coverage isn't so good and there should be enough spectrum at 800MHz for a few years yet, so building out a lot more base stations to provide coverage in 2GHz seems a waste of money when a lot fewer base stations could do the same job in 800MHz.
I'd have thought the best plan would be CDMA2000 and 1xEV-DO in 800MHz, then, when capacity is reached, start using up the higher frequencies, by which time infrastructure should be a lot cheaper.
W-CDMA has higher royalties, works only in 2GHz, runs slower, costs more to build out, subscriber equipment costs more, there's less choice of subscriber equipment.
I really don't get it. There must be some advantage and I can only think of the legacy back-end GSM equipment. But competition is a harsh task-master and I would not want to be selling expensive solid rubber tyres when the Model A rolls out, instead of high speed, comfortable, pneumatic tyres, just because that's what has always been made. Subscribers will want high-speed pneumatic tyres.
So many service providers are choosing to use 3GSM [W-CDMA] that there must be some sensible reason. If somebody can explain this, I'd appreciate it. Maybe it's that they think roaming will be easier and that will overcome the disadvantages. Multimode, multiband cyberphones should mean that's not much of an issue.
Mqurice |
