Re: Crossing the Lines

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
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

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