celluar data network speed comparison WAS: Re: verizon and openmoko

[Todd W]

From: "Dean Collins" <Dean at cognation.net>


> It doesn't make sense for FIC to offer a CDMA handset just for the USA,
> it's a dieing technology and GSM is more widely operated in almost all
> countries outside of the USA.

 Hello,

Contrarily, this is FUD. The only way CDMA is dieing is because it is being
upgraded to allow greater upload speeds (among other things). Also, the new
network is backwards compatible, so saying it is dieing is... simply put,
wrong.

To put things in perspective, GSM's download speeds are slower than EVDO's
current upload speeds.

On my Qualcomm PPC 6700, I can run IRC (group chat), IM (individual chat),
browse the web, and SSH (secure shell), and terminal services all at the
same time. Or if I want, I can connect my phone to my laptop, and
instantiate arbitrary network traffic that way.

Oh, and it has a WiFi client in it. I hardly use it, because the EVDO
network performs my network intensive tasks quite acceptably :-)

You'd be hard pressed to perform all of these tasks simultaneously on a CDMA
network.

Indeed, for this reason alone myself and many others will not be acquiring
an iPhone:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196900200

For those of you who skipped the article, here is the first line of the
story:

"The first customers of Apple's iPhone won't be traveling in the fast
broadband lane much of the time. Transmission speeds over Cingular
Wireless's Edge data network often drop down to dial-up speeds."

OpenMoko fills the void of open developer access, but for me the slow data
networks provided to it still make my Windows Mobile 5 device MUCH more
attractive.

Thats why Sprint has things like SprintTV and Verizon thier YouTube
interface and Cingular has none of these.

OpenMoko is definitely another great tool for the toolbox, but just so
everyone knows, there are already much more advanced wireless data
interfaces available.

Todd W.