Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: Crossing the Lines
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2008 14:39:18 -0800
________________________________________ From: Anthony Sorace [anothy () gmail com] Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2008 7:51 AM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Crossing the Lines For IP, if you like. Both the corruption in Iraq's reconstruction and the CDMA vs. GSM battles are topics of great personal interest. I'm strictly an outside observer in the first, but have some first-hand experience in the second. Mr. Scherer's article makes for very good reading. It didn't feel quite right, however; more than a little lopsided. I was struck by this comment first: // They wanted to follow U.S. troops into Iraq with Qualcomm's // patented cellular technology, called CDMA, a system no nation // in the Middle East had yet been willing to adopt. Wait, I thought, that's not right. My initial recollection was seeing Israel listed on Verizon's global roaming page; sure enough, there they are. A quick hop over to the CDMA Development Group's web site (cdg.org) and a review of their coverage map indicates that, at least by my definition, every country in the middle east has some form of CDMA network operating or pending. CDG doesn't give much in the way of details on these networks (it's possible that they're fixed-only, for example), but they certainly exist. No extensive investigative journalism on my part here. No question about it: CDMA's been slower to grow outside the US, and roaming remains very poor even amongst the existing networks. But that's not to say it doesn't exist, and that, in itself, calls the argument over CDMA in Iraq into question. What has likely been the largest factor in CDMA's global uptake is the fact that its backers were slower to engage in political efforts outside the United States (where the CTIA, historically, had a significant CDMA bias). The GSM community has for a long time had the GSM Association (GSMA), a significant part of who's mandate is government lobbying. I've been at a number of GSMA events now and have had the opportunity to listen to the organization's leadership talk about these efforts. The most striking was given by one of the organization's leaders talking about their efforts in Pakistan during 2004. Through an extensive lobbying campaign including closed meetings with Pakistan's president, the GSMA was able to "defend" against a number of regional fixed CDMA operators who were trying to expand into mobile service. It was very interesting; I've certainly been in church congregations with less fervor. By the GSMA's account, the CDMA operators in the region had convinced the Pakistani government to open up new licensing opportunities for additional technologies (including CDMA) based on CDMA's cost advantage in rolling out new coverage; the GSMA convinced the government to revert this position, based on the importance of the stability in government control. I talked to a few people in the ~150 person audience afterwards about my reaction - that the GSMA was bragging about using government lobbying to stifle competition and reduce consumer choice and service accessibility - before it was pointed out to me that the "congregation" was all telecom - GSM - insiders. Concerns about slowing innovation at the expense of the public were likely to fall on deaf ears. Mr. Scherer attempts to paint this as the corporate CDMA interests against the clearly "correct" answer of GSM at the expense of the Iraqi people. That's entirely consistent with the image of GSM as the only sensible option the GSMA is paid to perpetuate. My knowledge of the technology and experience with the GSMA tells me that while his version makes for better reading, it's likely not the whole story. Anthony Sorace ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- Crossing the Lines David Farber (Feb 08)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Crossing the Lines David Farber (Feb 09)
- Re: Crossing the Lines David Farber (Feb 10)