Cingular ATT merger. Better coverage?

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:35:42 -0800, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com>
wrote in <45cbec0f$0$69039$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>:

>Dennis Ferguson wrote:
>
>> This is kind of beside the point since neither a high-power GSM nor a
>> CDMA handset is likely to do much good talking to a normal tower. If
>> the base station radio designer thinks all handset radios transmit at
>> 200 mW then there's no use having the base station transmit much more
>> than 200 mW back at the handsets; if the tower can hear the handset at
>> that power then the handset will hear the tower. You need base stationss
>> to match the handsets.
>
>Well it's a virtual certainty that every AMPS tower also has CDMA or GSM
>on it, plus there's a lot of towers that are CDMA or GSM only.

Actually quite a few AMPS + TDMA towers, and still a fair number of
AMPS-only towers.

>The very fact that it many locations a GSM or CDMA phone can't get a
>digital signal, but an AMPS-capable phone can make and receive calls,
>means that AMPS has some advantage even with low power handsets. There
>are vast areas in California, including some in the San Francisco Bay
>Area counties, where AMPS is the only service you can pick up with a
>regular low power tri-mode CDMA/AMPS handset, and where there is no GSM
>coverage at all.

Digital coverage is actually quite good in the San Francisco Bay Area --
there are relatively few areas with AMPS-only coverage.

> > So all that's required is the deployment of a bunch of new stuff
>> and everything will be fine with digital phones. We're back around
>> to the original point: is there enough use in rural areas to support
>> any of this?
>
>Look at the mess in Australia. They put in CDMA to cover the outback,
>instead of AMPS, since GSM didn't have the range.

Extended Range GSM is actually capable of comparable range.

>Then they decided that
>they'll do W-CDMA in the outback and try to do one nationwide network,
>GSM for urban voice, W-CDMA for urban data, and rural voice. The CDMA
>sites in the outback could reach 120km in all directions.

Only under ideal conditions. Practical range is quite a bit less than
that.

>Presumably
>W-CDMA will be just as good.

Actually better.

>Eventually everything will be one version
>of CDMA or another, and even the voice in urban areas will be carried
>over the W-CDMA network.

Apples and oranges -- W-CDMA is actually quite different from and
incompatible with CDMA2000. CDMA without qualification is misleading.

>All this rigmarole when the European carriers would have loved to go to
>CDMA in the first place, but their governments wouldn't let them.

In fact there was no real interest in CDMA2000 in Europe, in part due to
horrid behavior by Qualcomm.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>