GSM v. CDMA: History of Cellular Network Standards

Justin Tsang

HSS 371

Blog #3-GSM vs. CDMA

10/11/2015

USA v. Europe: Cellular Network

            As of January 2014, over 90 percent of American adults own mobile phones and are subscribed to a cellular service provider; such as Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, or T-Mobile (“Mobile Technology Fact Sheet”). Although 4G LTE, or fourth generation Long Term Evolution, is today’s cell standard, Europe and America actually had different cellular network architectures back in the late 1900s. United States was mainly using CDMA, or Code Division Multiple Access, while Europe was using GSM, or Global System for Mobiles. The reason for this division in the development of the network standards is because Europe mandated GSM technology by law, while CDMA was developed by Qualcomm, a private telecommunication company founded in United States. From what we have read in Open Standards and the Digital Age by Russell, we learn that some European national governments, mainly Great Britain and France, funded and closely supervised the development of telecommunication standards. On the other hand, the American government had a permissive attitude and believed entrepreneurship would form these standards. As a result, Qualcomm was able to experiment and develop CDMA, which was faster and had higher capacity than GSM. Consequently, GSM was mainly used and expanding in large parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia, while CDMA was rapidly growing in United States and parts of Asia, such as South Korea and Japan.

The biggest difference between CDMA and GSM is how incoming and outgoing data are converted to radio waves (Hesse). GSM uses TDMA, or Time Division Multiple Access, which usually divides each radio frequency channel eight time slots to carry multiple phone calls or Internet connections. So basically, each user takes turn sending their calls or data to the radio channel, and the receiver is assigned to only that certain time slot and pieces the packets back together. On the other hand, CDMA assigns each call or data a unique key called the Direct Sequence Code and all the calls and data are transferred at once in a single packet (Segan). Then, the receiver uses the unique key to divide the combined transmitted data and retrieve the original intended call or data.

            GSM is more preferable in Europe and Asia because it is not locked to one carrier and can carry more users than CDMA. Therefore, people who wanted to travel to other countries in Europe or to other continents, such as Asia or Africa, they would just have to replace their SIM cards. On the other hand, since United States is a smaller region than Europe, CDMA was a more powerful and flexible than GSM, since calls and data did not have to share time on the radio channels. In addition, unlike GSM, subscribers of CDMA could not simply replace their SIM cards and stay on the same carrier service (Smith). Instead, they would have to replace their entire cellphone in order to continue having cell service. Therefore, CDMA, with its lack of range, could never be used in Eurasia since a plethora of countries are connected to each other, and it would be a nuisance to replace cellphones every time someone had to travel between countries or continents. Likewise, CDMA is more preferable than GSM in United States because of how secluded America is from other continents and the smaller land mass, so capacity and speed is more important than range of service.

            It was only until 1990s when ETSI decided to collaborate with all the other countries in order to standardize cellular telecommunication. With the change from 2G to 3G, the newly formed organization Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) aimed to standardize cellular network. However, even with the creation of 3GPP, CDMA could not be standardize under this organization, so another organization 3GPP2, created CDMA-2000 to standardize CDMA to 3G. Therefore, it was visible that these two different cellular standards were slowly merging and closing the gap in telecommunication standards. However, because of the different cell architecture and technology used in GSM and CDMA, it was still difficult to standardize both cell networks into a single network architecture. It was only the creation of LTE that introduced faster data transmission speed and higher capacity when both Europe and America finally were adopting the same cellular communication standard. Finally, we can see that America and Europe were slowly becoming accepting and no longer conflicting with each other. By 1988, the first transatlantic fiber optic cable, TAT-8, went into operation and allowed for singular telecommunication network between United States and Europe.  

Works Cited

Hesse, Brendan. "CDMA versus GSM: What’s the Difference?" Digital Trends. n.p., 08 Aug. 2015. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

"Mobile Technology Fact Sheet." Pew Research Center. n.p., 27 Dec. 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

Segan, Sascha. "CDMA vs. GSM: What's the Difference?" PCMag. n.p., 6 Feb. 2015. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

Smith, Matt. "GSM Vs. CDMA: What Is The Difference And Which Is Better?"MakeUseOf. n.p., 21 Aug. 2014. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.