Tweets for Today

[strredwolf]

• 06:25 #MTAMD Light Rail now stops at North Avenue, due to dwindling car supply. Expect shutdown of service soon! #
• 07:40 Gha! Bus canceled, can't make train! Kitteh late fer werk! #
• 08:35 Kitteh on LR, still runnin latez. #
• 10:19 Made it in 45 min late. #
• 19:42 Dear Sprint: Your phones don't work overseas. When are you going to join the rest of the world in using the GSM standard? #

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Comments

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

Sprint uses a mix of CDMA and IDEN networks IIRC, Verizon and many other tiny carriers use CDMA. Only T-Mobile and Cingular/AT&T use GSM, I believe, at least locally to me. Most of them have invested a great deal in their networks and it would be a huge undertaking to switch all at once. The only way it would happen is if they had a genuine benefit from switching and had the capability to do dual-band phones for a period of time.

The fact of the matter is that GSM/G3 are inferior to CDMA/1X, so it'll be hard to convince Verizon to switch. Sprint I haven't done enough research on to see if IDEN is inferior or superior. I do know that IDEN is heavily used in latin america, to the point where Sprint was thinking of splitting its IDEN network off to sell to a mexican carrier.

Honestly, you'd be better off buying a throwaway phone in most places in the world. They're probably cheaper to buy a throwaway local phone with a local phone card than to buy a dual-band phone that would handle both networks.

[strredwolf.livejournal.com]

Verizon Mobile has chosen the LTE standard for 4G service, same for AT&T (T-Mobile I think is lagging), so it'll switch to GSM in a few years. They'll switch to match their European parent Vodaphone (which all of Europe is GSM/HSDPA already).

Which means short of some pain, Sprint will have CDMA/IDEN and WiMAX for it's 4G network -- which is already up in Baltimore and getting, what, DSL speeds?