Does the iPhone mean the end of CDMA?

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#70351 11-May-2007 10:58

nzbnw:
Even prepaid and open term contracts....

Just checked Telecom's prices and saw a Nokia 2118 for $ 99. A comparable unsubsidized GSM handset like the Nokia 1110i costs $ 60 here in Europe.
A Treo 700 is sold for $ 999 at Telecom, whereas a 3G-enabled Treo 750 costs $ 915 in Europe.

So I can't see any subsidies in Telecom's prices.

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inquisitor

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#70353 11-May-2007 11:12

freitasm:

I have to disagree. Actually HSDPA LTE (to come software in the future) is pretty much the same as CDMA 2000 EVDO Rev C or later. They will converge at some point it seems.

No, it's not the same at all. With HSDPA we have already reached 14.4 MBit/s downstream, whereas EDVO has it's theoretical maximum at 3.1 MBit/s.
EDVO Rev B, which will offer 9 MBit/s, is not available yet and even when that's the case by the end of the year, it can't compete with UMTS/HSDPA, since a lot of hardware needs to be replaced for the Rev B update. According to a paper I read some weeks ago, UMTS/HSDPA-migration is cheaper than the upgrade to Rev B. And Rev C is far far away!

And remember, any HSDPA and WCDMA device still needs to use Qualcomm technology - just look in the back of those fancy UMTS/WCDMA cards from Vodafone and you will see the CDMA logo.

Qualcomm acutally is a leader for UMTS/HSDPA chips, too, but they don't own the patents for UMTS/HSDPA. In the UMTS/HSDPA-market they are just one out of many suppliers and don't have a monopoly like with CDMA.

Jama

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#70355 11-May-2007 11:18

wow I have to wade into this one...

Reliance have not dumped CDMA neither have China Unicom. In fact China Unicom run both GSM and CDMA networks which is called GSM1x and they have sold over 300,000 dual mode CDMA/GSM phones.

It is no longer about GSM vs CDMA which are both older technologies. It is about 3G which is CDMA (EVDO) and WCDMA (UMTS/HSDPA). Most chipsets for 3G are from Qualcomm this includes UMTS/HSDPA. The 3G products sold by Vodafone such as the USB Vodem use Qualcomm chipsets. Qualcomm own most of the IP for 3G.

There are currently around 120M 3G UMTS subscribers and 70M EVDO subscribers.

The future is all IP mobile networks based on CDMA technology. As Mauricio pointed out the evolution of these networks is LTE (HSDPA for GSM operators) and UMB (EVDO RevC for CDMA operators).

The point is that in the future it will not matter whether it is an EVDO or an HSDPA network as the device or phone will work on both.

Jama

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#70359 11-May-2007 11:28

What the?

A migration from RevA to RevB is actually quite inexpensive as it is a plug in card for the base station. The biggest cost is the base station back haul.

Show me a 14.4Mbps HSDPA network that actually delivers any where close to this speed? In NZ HSDPA is 3.6Mbps but you are lucky if you get half. The GSM camp is always good at over promising and under delivering on their speed claims. Remember GPRS?

RevA supports a max of 1.8Mbps up and 3.1Mbps down. RevB gives higher speeds to the cell edge. Also, it is not all about speed the latency is just as important.

inquisitor

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#70361 11-May-2007 11:38

Jama: wow I have to wade into this one...

Reliance have not dumped CDMA neither have China Unicom. In fact China Unicom run both GSM and CDMA networks which is called GSM1x and they have sold over 300,000 dual mode CDMA/GSM phones.

They both are in the process of complete migration:
http://www.indiabandwidth.com/mobile_network/mobilenetworknews17.html
Regarding Unicom I couldn't find any official statment about the complete migration, but it's sure, that Unicom won't continue their dualmode strategy due to the high costs, especially of the handsets, which aren't accepted by the Chinese market.
This article adumbates this problem:
http://en.ec.com.cn/pubnews/2005_01_19/200623/1070164.jsp

It is no longer about GSM vs CDMA which are both older technologies. It is about 3G which is CDMA (EVDO) and WCDMA (UMTS/HSDPA).

The range of WCDMA and EDVO is quite short, so you can't cover rural areas with those standards. You still need an regular GSM/EDGE or CDMA2000 overlay network to provide rural coverage.

Most chipsets for 3G are from Qualcomm this includes UMTS/HSDPA. The 3G products sold by Vodafone such as the USB Vodem use Qualcomm chipsets. Qualcomm own most of the IP for 3G.

As I mentioned before, it's not about the producer, but about the patents and royalities, which Qualcomm doesn't have for WCDMA.

There are currently around 120M 3G UMTS subscribers and 70M EVDO subscribers.

That's because the development and standardization of WCDMA took longer than EVDO. Of course a technology that is dictated by single company (EVDO by Qualcomm) is available faster than one, that is discussed and developed by so many parties.

The future is all IP mobile networks based on CDMA technology. As Mauricio pointed out the evolution of these networks is LTE (HSDPA for GSM operators) and UMB (EVDO RevC for CDMA operators).

The point is that in the future it will not matter whether it is an EVDO or an HSDPA network as the device or phone will work on both.

Regarding the future, I'm curious how EVDO and HSDPA will cope with WiMAX, which promises to bring much cheaper infrastructure.

Jama

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#70363 11-May-2007 11:47

Do your home work -

The range from HSDPA is crap because it uses 2100MHz. In Australia the range is huge because Telstra use 850MHz. The range from EVDO is a lot better than 2100MHz HSDPA because it uses 800MHz. In Europe a number of carriers operate EVDO over 450MHz which gives massive coverage.

inquisitor

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#70364 11-May-2007 12:17

I'm aware about the correlation of range and frequency.
But when comparing standards, you should proceed from the same frequency, since an operator can't choose frequency, but only the used technology. UMTS will be launched at 900 MHz this year and a 450 MHz version will be available soon, too.
Anyway, those 3G standards are more sensible to interferences and so won't reach the range of GSM or CDMA.

A migration from RevA to RevB is actually quite inexpensive as it is a plug in card for the base station. The biggest cost is the base station back haul.

I didn't express myself properly - the upgrade from Rev A to B is more expensive, as it requires hardware modifiction, whereas HSDPA-upgrades are mostly done by software except from some very old models.

Show me a 14.4Mbps HSDPA network that actually delivers any where close to this speed? In NZ HSDPA is 3.6Mbps but you are lucky if you get half. The GSM camp is always good at over promising and under delivering on their speed claims. Remember GPRS?

I could only test 3.6 MBit/s here in Germany and I regularly get the full speed. If you don't than either the air interface is overloaded or the basestation's backhaul is too narrow. Usually the backhaul is the bottleneck, since you won't have a wider backhaul bandwidth than the air interface bandwidth.

RevA supports a max of 1.8Mbps up and 3.1Mbps down. RevB gives higher speeds to the cell edge. Also, it is not all about speed the latency is just as important.

Latency of HSDPA is below 100ms, since data flow control was moved from the RNCs to the NodeBs with the introduction of HSDPA. But when going into the details, you should also bear in mind, that CDMA/EVDO requires an separate carrier channel for the data downlink and so wastes bandwidth. Also all CDMA basestations need to be synchronized, which is mostly done by GPS, and if this fails (e.g. due to weather influences), the network breaks down.

However, I think GSM/HSDPA is at least the better choice from the customer's point of view and if Telecom used GSM you could roam more easily and your phones were cheaper.

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Jama

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#70369 11-May-2007 12:47

Wastes bandwidth??

EVDO RevA - 1.25MHz carrier
HSDPA - 5MHz carrier

Latency for RevA is way below 100ms. I guess we are lucky in NZ that we get to play with both networks.

nzbnw

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#70381 11-May-2007 13:34

inquisitor: Just checked Telecom's prices and saw a Nokia 2118 for $ 99. A comparable unsubsidized GSM handset like the Nokia 1110i costs $ 60 here in Europe.
A Treo 700 is sold for $ 999 at Telecom, whereas a 3G-enabled Treo 750 costs $ 915 in Europe.

So I can't see any subsidies in Telecom's prices.

You are not comparing like with like. First making a comparison between the UK and NZ, and then GSM/UMTS and CDMA/EVDO.

Just as a side note, I'm sure the Vodafone 750v (In New Zealand) is a lot more expensive than the Treo 700wx.

nzbnw

nzbnw

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#70382 11-May-2007 13:35

Grant17: Completely OT, but I just wanted to say that:

NZBNW should win an award for the most Patriotic Signature Line

An awesome job by Dean and the boys yesterday morning to beat Oracle so convincingly

Go Team New Zealand !!!

Thanks Grant, it was a good race, so lets bring on the semis.

nzbnw

Loftus

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#70404 11-May-2007 18:50

Wow, normally I enjoy the technical discussions on this site, but inquisitor has simply amazed me with the number of misconceptions in one thread!

"Also all CDMA basestations need to be synchronized, which is mostly done by GPS, and if this fails (e.g. due to weather influences), the network breaks down."

The last time a Telecom CDMA site was brought down by the weather was during last year's winter storms in the south island, but that was due to the power outages lasting many days.

Perhaps inquisitor should refrain from talking about CDMA/EVDO in the GSM/WDCMA forum....

inquisitor

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#70444 11-May-2007 21:40

Jama: Wastes bandwidth??

EVDO RevA - 1.25MHz carrier
HSDPA - 5MHz carrier

EVDO:

UMTS/HSDPA:

Actually CDMA's bandwidth is 1.5 MHz per carrier. You forgot the protection spacing between the F-Band carriers and those 1.5 MHz are reserved for data only, whereas the 5 MHz in HSDPA are shared for any service. including voice and videotelephony and don't require a protection spacing within the carrier!
If you want EVDO data service, you need to run a separate F-Band carrier and actually most EVDO cell sites run 3 carriers, so they use 5 MHz of spectrum like HSDPA with the big disadvantage of wasting 0.5 MHz for the protection spacing and the inflexibility, as each F-band carrier will only serve data or voice. So on New Year's Eve you'll have an unused data carrier and a jammed voice carrier, whereas HSDPA networks can use the whole 5 MHz for voice, if necessary.
According to Siemens (I know they're not neutral) HSDPA is 4 times more efficient in the same spectrum when comparing EVDO Rev B (not available yet) to HSDPA cat. 10 (already available) and beyond that EVDO's datarate breaks in after 2 km (less than 20% of original speed), where HSDPA can still deliver at least 50% of it's speed.

EVDO can't compete with HSDPA - that's the result of any paper comparing both standards. The only reason to run EVDO is the high cost of migrating to HSDPA.

As of Loftus' objection regarding the availabilty of CDMA cell sites, I don't have any data, but every paper mentions the instabilty of CDMA due to the required synchronus timing. A single cell that is defective or doesn't receive the GPS signal will let also neighbouring cells break down.
It's also a problem to make basestations receive a GPS-signal, when they're inside buildings or underground. Anyway the dependancy on a third party system (GPS) is another disadvantage.

nzbnw

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#70453 11-May-2007 22:22

inquisitor: breaks in after 2 km (less than 20% of original speed), where HSDPA can still deliver at least 50% of it's speed.

EVDO can't compete with HSDPA - that's the result of any paper comparing both standards. The only reason to run EVDO is the high cost of migrating to HSDPA.

Well I thought I has heard it all, but this just takes the cake. Some one please tell Sprint and Verizon...

nzbnw

Loftus

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#70487 12-May-2007 16:15

Lets try some REAL facts for a change, shall we?

Fact#1. CDMA/EVDO carrier BW = 1.25MHz, and there is NO inter-carrier seperation (i.e. carrier #1 is hard-up against carrier#2, etc.)

Fact#2. W-CDMA/UMTS carrier BW is 5.0 MHz wide, but of this only 3.84 MHz is actually modulated RF. The remainder is "built-in" inter-carrier spacing at each end of the 3.84 MHz radio carrier.

Fact#3. If a CDMA site loses GPS signal it has a built-in crystal oscillator that can continue to provide the acturate timing reference required for many days (longer if the operator has selected high quality rubidium crystals instead of the cheaper quartz).

Fact#4. If a CDMA site loses it's timing reference altogether this then prevents effective hand-in or hand-out to the surrounding network.
"A single cell that is defective or doesn't receive the GPS signal will let also neighbouring cells break down." is just NOT the case. A serious hardware malfunction can cause the affected site to be taken down, but this affects GSM/UMTS sites exactly the same way.

Fact#5. EVDO throughput does NOT "break" after 2km. I have personally been involved with EVDO Rel0 drive-tests with downlink speeds recorded > 2 Mbps more than 5km away from the BTS. I remain constantly surprisised how fast EVDO operates in rural/provincial environments. (I wish TNZ would make it available to more people - but thats another topic)

Look, I really like UMTS/HSPA - there are many things in the 3GPP standards that are very cool. But regurgitating some dubious "facts" from biased comparison papers is NO way to conduct an intelligent conversion about the strengths & differences of the various technologies. I would strongly recommend, Inquisitor, you do some background reading on CDMA/EVDO. This is a good start: Qualcomm 1xEVDO site Yes it's from Qualcomm, so is probably biased, but it should provide some much-needed balance.

freitasm

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#70488 12-May-2007 16:18

This thread is/was about the iPhone... If you guys want to discuss CDMA/HSDPA please open another thread - you can even post the link here.

Back on topic please.

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