rift321's Journal: A Global Switch to CDMA

No one ever seems to talk about this, although it constantly is a question in my mind: Why does most of the world choose to use GSM, an inherently TDMA-based technology, when CDMA-based communication standards make better use of the frequency spectrum? Based on the few coding and information transmission classes I've taken, CDMA-based standards are simply the way to go.

Is this disadvantage related to AT&T's inferior network (compared to that of Verizon)? How different are the base stations for GSM systems from those of CDMA systems? Or, more to the point, how difficult would it be for the carrier using GSM to switch to CDMA?

I realize that there are other "standards" considerations to GSM usage (emergency calls, many hardware manufacturers, etc.), but I'm just talking about this huge dichotomy in cellular standards... why does it still exist??

Your question answers itself

[damn_registrars]

To some degree, the world uses GSM because, well, the world uses GSM. Any time a new market is developing a cellular network, they will likely want to use the same protocol as their neighbors, so that the phones they use will work in the next town/city/state/country, and the phones from the next town/city/state/country will work in their new location as well.

In other words, if we were still having protocol wars in the rest of the world, then perhaps CMDA would be able to get a meaningful foothold. Howev