Last October two of Canada’s three major national wireless providers, Bell (BCE Inc) and Telus Mobility, announced a joint venture to build a shared next-generation network. This partnership started in 2001 and was supposed to increase competition against Rogers Wireless (Canada’s #1 wireless carrier by subscribers), since 2001 Telus and Bell have erected shared towers, specifically in the Atlantic Canada region. Because of the shared network Bell and Telus were able to introduce 1xRTT in the early part of the decade and EVDO in 2005 very rapidly. Telus and Bell operate CDMA networks (CDMA-2000 with 1X and EVDO support to be specific). However that seemed to be changing in October of last year (2008). [read this for more information]
In October of 2008 Bell and Telus announced that they would be building a shared next-generation network, using HSPA+. Let’s take that piece by piece:
- Bell and Telus are currently CDMA carriers
- EVDO is the 3G data network for CDMA
- HSPA+ is a 3G GSM-based technology
- Verizon uses CDMA in the US
- Rogers Wireless currently operates Canada’s only GSM network (ATT, T-Mobile in the US)
- Rogers has HSPA+ sectors in major Canadian centers, 3G in most major centers, and EDGE covering the remaining area
…
Bell and Telus are giving up CDMA. If you aren’t familiar with cellular technology please read the following section about CDMA-2000:
CDMA2000 is a hybrid 2.5G / 3G technology of mobile telecommunications standards that use CDMA, a multiple access scheme for digital radio, to send voice, data, and signalling data (such as a dialed telephone number) between mobile phones and cell sites. CDMA2000 is considered a 2.5G technology in 1xRTT and a 3G technology in EVDO. CDMA2000 is also known as IS-2000. CDMA (code division multiple access) is a mobile digital radio technology where channels are defined with codes (PN codes). CDMA permits many simultaneous transmitters on the same frequency channel, unlike TDMA (time division multiple access), used in GSM and D-AMPS, and FDMA, used in AMPS ("analog" cellular). Since more phones can be served by fewer cell sites, CDMA-based standards have a significant economic advantage over TDMA- or FDMA-based standards. CDMA2000 has a relatively long technical history, and remains compatible with the older CDMA telephony methods (such as cdmaOne) first developed by Qualcomm, a commercial company, and holder of several key international patents on the technology.
from Wikipedia
The major benefit to CDMA is coverage; due to the basic concept of CDMA it is possible and actually has much better indoor coverage. Odds are that if you are on ATT, T-Mobile, or Rogers and you don’t have coverage, odds are that your friends’ on Bell, Telus, Verizon, or Sprint do. The major flaws to CDMA are lack of roaming—outside of North America there are few CDMA carriers, and that the patents to CDMA radios are owned by Qualcomm as opposed to the open nature of GSM.
If you aren’t familiar with GSM, please read the following from Wikipedia;
GSM (Global System for Mobile communications: originally from Groupe Spécial Mobile) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. Its promoter, the GSM Association, estimates that 80% of the global mobile market uses the standard.[1] GSM is used by over 3 billion people across more than 212 countries and territories.[2][3] Its ubiquity makes international roaming very common between mobile phone operators, enabling subscribers to use their phones in many parts of the world. GSM differs from its predecessors in that both signaling and speech channels are digital, and thus is considered a second generation (2G) mobile phone system. This has also meant that data communication was easy to build into the system. GSM EDGE is a 3G version of the protocol. The ubiquity of the GSM standard has been an advantage to both consumers (who benefit from the ability to roam and switch carriers without switching phones) and also to network operators (who can choose equipment from any of the many vendors implementing GSM[4]). GSM also pioneered a low-cost (to the network carrier) alternative to voice calls, the short message service (SMS, also called "text messaging"), which is now supported on other mobile standards as well. Another advantage is that the standard includes one worldwide emergency telephone number, 112.[5] This makes it easier for international travellers to connect to emergency services without knowing the local emergency number.
from Wikipedia
What I hope you draw from this is that Bell and Telus are moving to the global standard for cell phones, however it is deemed superior in the eyes of many engineers, mainly for the reason that it has a soft limit to how many subscribers can be in one cell at a time and can perform soft handoffs. The first thing I said, soft limit, means that unlike GSM which divides the radio spectrum into blocks of time on frequency channels can only divide x many channels into x many time chunks, and therefore only x many clients can be connected to a cell at a time. CDMA on the other hand is only limited in the number of clients in a cell by the amount of radio noise that exists on that frequency as any transmitter can broadcast at any time and therefore doesn’t need to worry about dividing time. The problem with that is when that radio noise gets too loud, possibly from x many clients in the cell site, the cell phones will try to broadcast louder to overcome the noise—the obvious problem being that they can only transmit with a limited amount of power. At this point all of the clients will suffer from poor call quality, dropouts, and slow data connections, and diminished battery life. Just remember this soft limit is (potentially) much higher than the GSM client limit.
And I forgot the best part; this network was first publicly announced last October with a planned premiere date of January 2010 to serve the Vancouver Olympics… well Bell-Telus have set a standard not seen since the Apple-Intel transition. The network is DONE and will be available to consumers next month (November)! Because of this sudden development I propose a few possible near-futures…
This next step is dedicated to all of the Rogers’ subscribers who aren’t in a 3G coverage zone. What I hope will come from this is:
- Bell will start buying out Rogers’ customers’ contracts to get them to move over to the Bell-Telus network causing Rogers’ to innovate.
- Rogers’ will be lazy and just sign a cell-site sharing agreement with Bell-Telus to allow Rogers’ customers to access Bell’s HSPA+ network potentially saving Rogers money.
- Rogers will take this as a clue that they have to provide 3G access or their customers, like me, to cancel our contracts and move to Bell, see option 1
- Rogers’ is so dedicated to it’s customers that it gives discounts to users in non-3G areas in an attempt to hold on to subscribers as it builds out 3G.
Personally, I’m hoping for option # 2; it seems to be the least expensive, least time consuming, and most immediate action. If you’re an iPhone user with 3G coverage try switching it off and see if you’d be complaining too.
Also, Telus now has news of the iPhone 3GS coming to their new network “soon” –by which they mean November if they’re on the same page as Bell. As you can see from my Tweet this evening:
As a final note I should mention how sad I am that Telus and Bell will soon migrate from one of my favorite technologies since discovering the Iomega Bernoulli Box… except CDMA is still practical, and is superior to other technologies in that industry.