AT&T Inks MVNO Deal with Sprint, Plans W-Fi Phones
confused
So I'm a bit confused. Was it AT&T Wireless that was moving toward a WCDMA network in 2005?
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NobleEcho said:
So I'm a bit confused. Was it AT&T Wireless that was moving toward a WCDMA network in 2005?
Yes. And that will continue, (and in fact accelerate,) under Cingular.
But this is something totally separate.
At this very moment (and for the past several years) AT&T Wireless is a separate company from AT&T. When AT&T Wireless was spun off from the "mother" company, they kept the right to use "AT&T" in their name and use the same logo.
But now with Cingular buying AT&T Wireless, the right to use the "AT&T" brand for wireless will revert back to the "mother" company. And so this is about AT&T (ma bell, not AWS) putting that brand back to work in the wireless market.
This new ventur...
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oh thanks, Rich. So Att wireless is going wcdma, but is cingular sticking with its gsm network? To me that wouldnt make sense because I would think that Wcdma would be the next logical step in developing their gsm network to compete with the CDMA-based carriers. I'm sure there are problems with money and everything, espeically because of the recent buy-out...
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AT&T Wireless is rolling out WCDMA in 4 cities later this year, possibly as soon as July or August.
But after AT&T Wireless and Cingular merge and become the "new" Cingular, they will be able to combine most of their spectrum assets. Then they will become the only carrier with enough spare spectrum to roll out WCDMA in most cities nationwide, and they will start doing that fairly quickly. That's what I meant when I said WCDMA would accelerate under Cingular.
But regardless, GSM isn't going anywhere. WCDMA does include voice, but it doesn't work in the 850 band, so abandoning GSM would mean abandoning perfectly good spectrum and network capacity worth many billions - it wouldn't make any sense.
But after AT&T Wireless and Cingular merge and become the "new" Cingular, they will be able to combine most of their spectrum assets. Then they will become the only carrier with enough spare spectrum to roll out WCDMA in most cities nationwide, and they will start doing that fairly quickly. That's what I meant when I said WCDMA would accelerate under Cingular.
But regardless, GSM isn't going anywhere. WCDMA does include voice, but it doesn't work in the 850 band, so abandoning GSM would mean abandoning perfectly good spectrum and network capacity worth many billions - it wouldn't make any sense.
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I think there is a confusion between CDMA and W-CDMA they are 2 completely separate types of networks. One has nothing to do with the other.
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W-CDMA is better but is completly unrelated to the CDMA found in Verizon Sprint and Alltel. W-CDMA is the upgrade path for GSM found in Cingular and T-Mobile etc
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vytaL said:
W-CDMA is better but is completly unrelated to the CDMA found in Verizon Sprint and Alltel. W-CDMA is the upgrade path for GSM found in Cingular and T-Mobile etc
Shouldn't that be "theoretically WCDMA is better than CDMA"?
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WCDMA is different than CDMA in certain RF characteristics and how it processes code. It is not "better" than CDMA unless of course you compare it to IS-95 CDMA and forget that the big CDMA carriers are using CDMA 2000 which has approximately the same capabilities as WCDMA but is much more efficient in its handling of bandwidth. Comparing IS-95 CDMA to WCDMA or CDMA 2000 is like comparing TDMA to GSM.
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Oh i know quite well that they are two seperate things. But thanks for the initial response, rich.
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nobio0 said:
which is better cdma or w-cdma.
They're... different. 😉
Actually, it depends on which type of CDMA - there are many.
For now, WCDMA (UMTS) means just one type of wireless standard. (Although that will eventually change with various flavors of HSDPA.)
But when you say "CDMA", you could mean any of:
IS-95
CDMA2000 1xRTT
CDMA2000 1xEV-DO
CDMA2000 1xEV-DV
...and even within that, there are at least two different variants of each of those four general standards.
Each of those four general standards is pretty different - some might be "better" than WCDMA in some ways, while others are not, or in different ways.
Generally, WCDMA is "better" than IS-95 or 1xRTT, while EV...
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i am a non-technical cell phone user and just registered with this site-hope it's okay to pose a question-if you had 1 year left on an att wireless contract and had been planning to upgrade to their gsm service to get a new better phone/avoid roaming charges when outside ca, but that would lock you in longer, & what you want most is a flip phone like the samsung that gives you updated calender, e-mail, etc. on a palm like screen with stylus-would you just wait for old att to roll out their new wireless system and hopefully get the sprint features mentioned for the samsung flip, or will they still have a lot less coverage/phone reception than the new cingular entity?-thanks for considering
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😳 Longest... sentence... ever....
Ever heard of something called punctuation? 😛
But seriously...
First, (and it sounds like you might know this, but just to be clear,) the Cingular merger / acquisition includes the customers, so whether you stick with TDMA or upgrade to GSM, when the merger becomes final, you will automatically become a Cingular customer. To use this new AT&T/Sprint network, you would need to get out of your contract (or wait for it to expire) and switch to this new AT&T carrier.
Second, just like Qwest and Virgin, the new AT&T will have its own lineup of CDMA phones. They won't carry the same phones as Sprint. If you want a Sprint phone, go with Sprint.
Ever heard of something called punctuation? 😛
But seriously...
First, (and it sounds like you might know this, but just to be clear,) the Cingular merger / acquisition includes the customers, so whether you stick with TDMA or upgrade to GSM, when the merger becomes final, you will automatically become a Cingular customer. To use this new AT&T/Sprint network, you would need to get out of your contract (or wait for it to expire) and switch to this new AT&T carrier.
Second, just like Qwest and Virgin, the new AT&T will have its own lineup of CDMA phones. They won't carry the same phones as Sprint. If you want a Sprint phone, go with Sprint.
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thank you-do you think it more likely that the new att will rival the network coverage of new cingular with good quality cdma (calendering, etc?) or that cingular will improve significantly in the cdma area?
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SNOOPY said:
thank you-do you think it more likely that the new att will rival the network coverage of new cingular with good quality cdma ...
Since the new AT&T Mobile (or whatever they call it) will be using Sprint's network, coverage will be identical to Sprint's. (Except for roaming - I don't know what their plans are in that area.)
After the big merger, the new Cingular will definitely have more coverage than anyone else, although it will take them some time to fine-tune it all.
Keep in mind that Sprint's coverage is a lot better than it used to be. Just because Cingular will have more/better coverage, doesn't mean Sprint's coverage won't meet your needs just fine.
... (calendering,...
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thanks-sorry, i thought cdma referred to functions like obtaining e-mail and calendering wirelessly-the current att system for those functions does not seem as user friendly as sprint's-whose service do you like best?-or should i not be asking that type of question?-i am very new to the conventions of this type of site
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CDMA, WCDMA, GSM, and TDMA are all basic digital wireless technologies. Think of them like AM vs. FM radio.
Sprint and Verizon use CDMA. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Cingular use GSM.
CDMA and GSM are not compatible. A CDMA phone cannot work on a GSM network, and vice-versa.
As for e-mail and calendar functions, I don't think there is any one term for that, but all of the carriers offer multiple options. It depends on what type of device you are using (regular phone, smartphone, BlackBerry, Pocket PC, Palm, laptop, etc.) and what (if any) Internet, corporate, or desktop PIM system you want to keep it synced with. There are literally dozens of ways to do it, and most of the carriers support most of them these days.
Sprint and Verizon use CDMA. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Cingular use GSM.
CDMA and GSM are not compatible. A CDMA phone cannot work on a GSM network, and vice-versa.
As for e-mail and calendar functions, I don't think there is any one term for that, but all of the carriers offer multiple options. It depends on what type of device you are using (regular phone, smartphone, BlackBerry, Pocket PC, Palm, laptop, etc.) and what (if any) Internet, corporate, or desktop PIM system you want to keep it synced with. There are literally dozens of ways to do it, and most of the carriers support most of them these days.
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thank you for your time and effort-now i may be able to read postings to your site with some clue regarding their meaning and may be able to learn more-i have no idea how the average cell phone user can understand all the possible services, contracts and related permutations without significant research-without the internet you could never get enough info on this-we've been to 8 different "phone stores" including att, sprint, verizon, cingular "specialists" in monterey and san francisco, and only one person in an s.f. store carrying sprint could answer anything more than really basic questions-thanks again
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