Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 11:02:43 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: keichii@peorth.iteration.net, Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>, Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: GSM vs. CDMA (was: VCD (was Re: cvs commit: src/sys/dev/ata atapi-cd.c)) Message-ID: <20010123110243.B16070@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <200101230019.RAA05346@usr08.primenet.com>; from tlambert@primenet.com on Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 12:17:47AM %2B0000 References: <20010121182033.C44819@peorth.iteration.net> <200101230019.RAA05346@usr08.primenet.com>
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On Tuesday, 23 January 2001 at 0:17:47 +0000, Terry Lambert wrote: >> GSM is a set of protocol for mobile phones, and so is PCS. >> I tend to think of them as being comparable to TCP vs. UDP. > > [ ... ] > >>> Don't forget that they have recently started introducing GSM into the >>> USA. I've found that it works better than the CDMA service. This has >>> nothing to do with the relative merits of the technology, but with the >>> fact that the service providers learnt that their cell placement was >>> too sparse for the old analogue/*DMA network, and they placed them >>> closer for GSM. >> >> Yes, I recently switched from AT&T PCS to Voicestream GSM in America. > > The salient point is that GSM is not all you need to hook in. > > In case this wasn't obvious: don't expect your GSM phone from > outside the US to work in the US, Canada, or Mexico. The US > GSM system uses a different set of frequencies, so unless your > phone is multifrequency as well as multimode, it won't work. You've jumped into this discussion relatively late (I hope). We've already discussed this, along with the frequencies. > Actually, I've only seen a couple of phones that are capable of > multimode _and_ multifrequency, and they were very expensive; you > might as well just have two phones... That depends on where you live. Triband GSM phones aren't overly expensive, there just aren't many of them. I have a Motorola L+, which has different names in different parts of the world. It works just about everywhere I have taken it, and it costs no more than its two-band competitors. It's just a POS. I really hate the user interface, and as soon as Nokia comes out with a triband phone, I'll buy one. I did consider using the Motorola only in America and the Nokia in the Real World(tm), but I found that jumping from one interface to another was more of a nuisance than I thought. It was relatively simple, though, since I just needed to swap SIMs :-) Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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