Well Mardy, you sure do make some good points and I too would like to ensure they are sorted out.
I imagine [maybe wrongly] that The Tube, Nuclear Hardened Bunkers, Inside the Pentagon, the basement of the World Trade Centre would be covered by cdmaOne by way of repeater systems, such as they use to string out along a highway, with a Mummy Babe providing the link into the network and presumably the synchronization too. So timing should be okay with GPS provided there is a link to another part of the network.
A standalone Babe in a bunker would not have the benefit of GPS so any minibabes in the same bunker would need to have a different timing system - but I guess that could be achieved by clipping a good wrist watch onto the system as a metronome.
"Jamming" could happen in any radio environment. A busted cellphone recently conked out a chunk of network somewhere in southern USA and the person was quite surprised when the Feds caught up with him and told him what his cellphone was doing to the system. Are you saying GPS radio frequencies are specially prone to being destroyed by illegal interference?
On the reliance on a government system, I have to agree with you that I wouldn't take that as any quality recommendation, but sometimes it is the best thing available at the time. I assume Qualcomm selected synchronisation by GPS for good reason, but maybe you can explain why something else is better. I suspect there is something, but don't know what - perhaps a resonance in the Globalstar system would be better [a sort of round the world hum and if you are out of tune, you need to adjust your timing slightly]. Qualcomm has got a long tradition of aiming at quality, elegant solutions with low cost. For example, Iridium is more impressive than Globalstar for the space switching but the boring bent pipe works a treat and allows lower cost for high quality signals.
While the American culture invasion of the world is well underway, Pisa is still not Pizza! For all I know, Pizza did come from Pisa though I don't know. Anyway, it sure would be nice to make a call from anywhere and get through.
Surely the American problem of fragmentation is more due to government regulation than a failing of the free market. Until very recently and it is still the case, telecoms in the USA were very heavily restricted. Only two networks were allowed. Long distance and local were separated. A whole huge Federal bureaucracy drew billions in pay over the years to stop efficiency. It's not fair to blame a free market when there was no free market.
The FCC is now having the brilliant brainstorm that if they allow 'calling party pays', things will improve. Well, Duh!
When they allow full and unfettered competition there will very quickly be nationwide single suppliers of very efficient, high quality and cheap wireless services. Even the C-Block auction was some Mickey Mouse charity for 'Minorities' [which in the USA I think means people who pass the ASTM colour bar], women [who are presumably mentally defective and need some charity to make it in the world - though how they'll run a good system if they are mentally defective beats me], small companies [which also have a constitutional right to special favours] and other weird ideas. That was only a couple of years ago and now it's mired in legislation as the Mickey Mouse Mess is sorted out.
The phone you should take on your trip next year is a Globalstar phone [depending on how far north in Alaska you are going].
The catfish is reminiscent of the Hagfish and I suppose it is a bit like the North American GSM Association is related to the GSM crowd in Europe. Same DNA, just a bit twisted. There is even a garden slug here [found a few weeks ago] which had definite hagfish tendencies.
Yukkk!
Maurice |
