Don't listen to a word he says. Any time he starts a post with "it's been proven" or "it's scientific fact" you'd better light a candle because it's gonna stink. And funny enough, post after post, we never get to see that scientific fact.

Warble is that digital distortion that is caused by low, weak signal strength. And since GSM and CDMA are digital technologies, when the signal fades, it doesn't create that static you may have heard on a analog phone. Instead the digital recreation of your voice signature will get distorted when the phone fails to receive some digital portions of that voice signature.

You've all seen those graphical representations of a human voice right, most likely on Fantasia? Think of that crazy wavey line that o...
(continues)

Hey CDG, you seem to know what's what (and can at least give scientific reasons for why you believe what you believe, unlike some others)...so here's a question:

GSMers always insist that GSM provides the best voice quality, but I've read in articles that its not so hot in that department, in some cases poorer than TDMA. Who's right? And how does CDMA stack up in voice quality vs competing technologies, both in the current 2.5G implementation and, going forward, in 3G?

Any info would be appreciated. 🙂

Voice Quality is an elulsive measurement to make. We have measurements that we can make to see just how clearly reproduced a waveform is (Rho), but audio quality is ultimately subjective.

All the digital technologies all have to go through a D/A A/D conversation at some point. In other words, the handset takes your voice, turns it into a digital signature, modulates, amplifies, and radiates the signal to the basestation. Once there, the reverse process happens. That digital signature is then deconstructed into an analog signal that is pushed through the speaker membrane into the other users ear.

There is no direct comparison of voice quality from one technology to the other, especially when you're dealing with RF. Now, I really do no...
(continues)

Mmm...okay, put another way, in your opinion as an engineer, where do you think audio quality losses most commonly occur, and to what severity of effect relative to other factors?:

1) D/A or A/D conversion process (some phones do it better/worse?)
2) transmission (the phone's ability to modulate, amplify, and radiate a signal)
3) physical interference or heavy call loads on the base station
4) CDMA or GSM standards
5) the phone's speaker (i.e. cheap or poorly placed)
6) anything I missed

Just curious. 🙂

1) for most part, most phones do D/A A/D conversation the same for CDMA, in the sense that most phones use the same Qualcomm chipset (or versions thereof). Nokia would be the worst in CDMA.

2) This would be where the biggest loss of quality comes in to play. Refer back to my throwing puzzle pieces post.

3) Call loading of cell sites in CDMA does not impede voice quality at all.

4) I don't have enough independent testing experience with GSM to offer an opinion, but being they are both digital radio link technologies, I would suspect they'd be about the same.

5) a bad speaker kills all the work you've done in triple-redundancy systems.

6) Bad duplexers not able to handle multipath may lose some.

7) a bad system determination ...
(continues)

Yes it is. Thanks CDG, you're a champ. 😎

Thanks for sparking great technical discussions!! Great questions!!!

I just want to make a comment on number 3. It is true that CDMA does not have a hardlimit on the number of connection to the tower but that doesn't mean it can handle an unlimited number of connections. The number of connections that a tower can handle depends on what that the connnections are doing at that time. I would really like to see what would happen to an overloaded CDMA tower but i think it would require a huge number of people on that tower with no other towers around.

It's not elusive at all.

There are several technologies that have been used to enhance the quality AND the capacity of voice services.

The first time GSM was able to say "we have superior voice quality" was back in 1995. Nokia developed and implemented a little thing called EFR and it changed EVERYTHING. Enhanced Full Rate was introduced by Nokia. The US used this voice code as its standard for the 1900 mhz band for GSM. "Testing has shown that the voice quality of the EFR codec is comparable to landline voice quality and provides the highest quality of any mobile communications technology. It also extends the range of GSM/DCS quality coverage because the codec is more robust to non-voice signals such as music. Landline quality is al...
(continues)

When can I sign up for your class???

... and then there was light...

I think I can hear crickets...

Mmm... not yet, Cain. While I applaud you for actually taking the time to research your claims, I'd be interested in CDG's take on it too.

Also... why the heck was Morgan Stanley, a company that's paid to know these things presumably, saying that GSM has worse voice quality than TDMA, then?:

GSM was a great opportunity for AT&T Wireless, but it was also a huge CRM challenge. The company had to convince its old customers to move off TDMA, which worked as well as most other carriers’ networks for voice calls, and onto GSM, which had poorer voice quality, according to Morgan Stanley. It also had to convince new customers that GSM was the wave of the future, that they would soon be shipping data over their phones instead of their ...
(continues)

I'd give Morgan Stanley a few reasons why they would say that.
1. ATT fell flat on their faces when they launched GSM. They totally screwed it up on the technical end and MANY customers had very bad service during the initial launch.
2. Morgan Stanley could have just been giving excuses as to why an investment it recommended went sour.
3. They could just be misinformed. They aren't an independant testing organization. They're an investment firm.
4. They might be referring to the very first voice codecs used in GSM (1992). The voice quality wasn't "worse" than TDMA, but it wasn't better either. GSM at that point only offered better capacity. Full Rate and Enhanced Full Rate codecs changed all that.

The really cool thing about...
(continues)

But Cain We can find white papers that will say the complete opposite and support CDMA over GSM. Your "open ended system" still has a major flaw in that its RF layer is TDMA which limits it greatly. The European cariers would have adopted CDMA three years ago if their regulatory bodies would have allowed it. Almost everyone of them requested permission to go CDMA. Their regulators told them to build a homegrown European system so now we have WCDMA.
I could have awesome processing power in my computer but if my internet connection is dialup then that processing power gets wasted.
A spread spectrum RF network has fewer limitations than a TDMA RF network.

"The European cariers would have adopted CDMA three years ago if their regulatory bodies would have allowed it. Almost everyone of them requested permission to go CDMA. Their regulators told them to build a homegrown European system so now we have WCDMA."

uhhhhhh... where did you get THAT crap? I'd like to see your "proof" on that claim. And if it WERE true, why would they go against what the UTI recommended for them. The body that handles wireless technologies and actually standardizes the technologies STRONGLY recommended that ALL narrowband carriers convert to wideband. These are the guys who KNOW how ALL technoologies will work. Europe cannot be blamed for taking THEIR advice. But one important fact here: Europe consists of 16% of the...
(continues)

CainMarko said:
I've read so many independant papers and adding that to my own experiences, have seen an ongoing pattern. CDMA offers an upgrade and claims superiority. GSM releases an answer that always tops the CDMA solution.

But Cain, I'm confused... if GSM really was 'all that and a bag of chips' and has it all over CDMA, then how come CDMA's markeshare is going UP rather than down?:

Looking ahead

CDMA will continue to expand and capture larger market share. In its April 2004 forecast, Yankee Group predicted that the CDMA base will reach 233 million users by the end of the year and over 354 million by the end of 2008, growing its overall market share from 15% to 18.3%.

http://ww »...
(continues)

BetterThanJake said:

CainMarko said:
I've read so many independant papers and adding that to my own experiences, have seen an ongoing pattern. CDMA offers an upgrade and claims superiority. GSM releases an answer that always tops the CDMA solution.

But Cain, I'm confused... if GSM really was 'all that and a bag of chips' and has it all over CDMA, then how come CDMA's markeshare is going UP rather than down?:

Looking ahead

CDMA will continue to expand and capture larger market share. In its April 2004 forecast, Yankee Group predicted that the CDMA base will reach 233 million users by the end of the year and over 354 million by the end of 2008, growing its overall market shar

...
(continues)

BetterThanJake said:

But Cain, I'm confused... if GSM really was 'all that and a bag of chips' and has it all over CDMA, then how come CDMA's markeshare is going UP rather than down?:

Looking ahead

CDMA will continue to expand and capture larger market share. In its April 2004 forecast, Yankee Group predicted that the CDMA base will reach 233 million users by the end of the year and over 354 million by the end of 2008, growing its overall market share from 15% to 18.3%.

http://www.cdg.org/worldwide/cdma%5Fsubscriber%5Frep ... »

Why would the market increasingly choose an 'inferior' technology then? 😕

Something else just nabbed my attention in your post.
It says, according ...
(continues)

Cain Marko said:
It says, according to the Yankee Group, CDMA will have more market share according to those numbers. Well, this would be true, but GSM is gaining subscribers as well.

I'm sure they took that into account, Cain. I think I'll trust the Yankee Group's marketshare numbers, which are 15% current share for CDMA, and 18.3% projected.

Far as your 'fastest growing' concerns go, my guess is that CDMA groups, when they say "fastest growing", are going by percentage increase. Since CDMA's marketshare is increasing, CDMA is very likely growing faster than GSM in percentage terms.

But in absolute number of subscribers terms, yes, you'd be right about GSM adding more. GSM has a larger segement of the mar...
(continues)

BetterThanJake said:

Cain Marko said:
It says, according to the Yankee Group, CDMA will have more market share according to those numbers. Well, this would be true, but GSM is gaining subscribers as well.

I'm sure they took that into account, Cain. I think I'll trust the Yankee Group's marketshare numbers, which are 15% current share for CDMA, and 18.3% projected.

We'll see. I can't wait to get the year end totals.

FOUND IT!!! (Damn, this thread's been busy for the past few days).

Ok first of all, thank you! Sincerely THANK YOU!! This is probably the first informative post I've read from you. You really managed to score a run with your reply, unfortunately we were playing football not baseball. You didn't prove how you measure voice quality. What test is performed in Cingulars labs on vendor handsets that measures voice quality? In CDMA, there is a method of measurement called Wave Form quality, or Rho factor. That is, how accurately is the transmitted waveform recreated in the receiving mobile compared to the waveform that was transmitted from the basestation. The spec states that at -104dBm (which would be almost 0 bars on your display in most cas...
(continues)

CDGIII said:

And again, you're comparing data rates of HSPDA to EVDO. EVDO is deployed. HSPDA is not. Apples to Oranges.

Not really... Just because it's "deployed" doesn't make it an "apple" and HSDPA an "orange". Truth be told: EV-DO is an apple and so is HSDPA: EV-DO is just the apple that was released FIRST. But, in "generations", they are the same generation of technology. They are the same level of release so to speak... I have said hundreds of times that CDMA was FASTER to 3G, but just isn't better.

But if the question is who has the fastest data network, doesn't it make sense to argue what each carrier has now?

CDGIII said:
But if the question is who has the fastest data network, doesn't it make sense to argue what each carrier has now?

I totally agree. Cingular has EDGE now. VZW has 1xRTT now. EDGE is faster. VZW is deploying EV-DO. ATTWS deployed UMTS in 6 cities. VZW's EV-DO is peforming better than ATT's UMTS (though I think that the difference is marginal. You can blink and miss the difference). Cingular has yet to deploy UMTS, but testing is going well. I think we will match the speeds of VZW's EV-DO when our UMTS is released. I've seen some incredibly fast downloads using a Lucent PC card.
But back to the point... Cingular offers the fastest NATIONWIDE data currently. That May change when...
(continues)

"Yes, I am quite aware of the measurements of voice capacity, but once again this has little to do with overall voice quality until you've reached the full capacity of a network system..."

Actually, that was my point with the AMR vocodecs. AMR codecs actually enhance voice quality when error coding is not needed. It shows up when you are on a GSM phone and you are in optimal conditions. A GSM phone will have perfect clarity with a landline but the volume and clarity will go way up when calling another GSM phone with good signal. I often have MUCH better call quality with my GSM phone than with even my landlines.

Up until 2 years ago locally, Cingular had the best quality & clearest signals. It was so good, you couldn't hear the phone ring, couldn't hear the called party, couldn't hear anything but yourself swearing at your Cingular phone.
Alas, Cingular broke their beautiful clear voice quality & added noise to their GSM network. Next thing you know, you'd get the noise of a phone ringing & the noise of a person answering. Sure miss those good ole days.

great.... more "experts"... 🙄

The original question was, how do you measure voice quality, not how do you enhance it. And so far, my original point has been well proven throughout this thread. To make a quantitative measurement of voice quality, it is elusive. We have tools that can help us, such as Rho factor, FER in CDMA, BER in TDMA/GSM, but ultimately what you come down to is the human ear. What sounds good to me may not sound good to you. And so the only thing you can hope to acheive is as close to a faithful reproduction of the wave form on the receiving end.

I just re-read the original posted question, and looks like I am wrong. I assumed the question was how can you meaasure the differences, and that's where I took the question. sorry to have missed the point of your question, BetterThanJake. I have to run out to the field, but maybe when I get back next week, we can talk some more. Have a great week everybody!! (Dr Nick: "Bye bye, Everybody!!")

Have a great week, CDG. 🙂

Ah Yes The mighty GSM with its best data rates at about 120kbps. 1xRTT on the Sprint network gets 225-256kbps quite consistently.

Reality: UMTS/HSPDA is vaporware and will be for some time. The CDG has several options to counter anything that HSPDA offers they are looking for the one with the best use of spectrum.

Reality: At 10MBPS you are outrunning most internet servers connection speeds, so speed at that point becomes moot. 20mbps merely means that you have more speed than the system you are communicating with.

Data communications is a funny thing, awesome server speed filtering through a tight bottleneck. Kind of like an hourglass.

As for system capacity GSM channel usage is still limited by the amount of other towers each...
(continues)

SPCSVZWJeff said:
responses in BOLD
Ah Yes The mighty GSM with its best data rates at about 120kbps. 1xRTT on the Sprint network gets 225-256kbps quite consistently.i want FIVE bags of whatever you are smoking! not only is that BULLSH1T, but you obviously have done NO research. 1xRTT hass a MAXIMUM speed of 144 kbps but NEVER gets to that speed. THE END. It goes NO FASTER (release 1 is "promising" faster data rates, but there are NO DEVICES that handle speeds faster than 144kbps). EDGE reaches speeds up to 144 kbps NOW and will be FASTER as carriers implement the different releases. I consistently get 100kbps+ even in LOW signal areas. Please do MORE research BEFORE making such ridiculous claims.

Realit

...
(continues)

Cain - we missed ya man! Good to see you're still spewing the crap. Man, you don't let up.

What crap is that? The truth ?

Well, you're pretty good at spinning a pretty little Christmas tale there, Kris Kringle, but the only "Facts" YOU present are the ones you can get in any training class. But I have yet to see you back up your "facts". Where are YOUR case studies? The way you represent yourself, you'd think you were a badass technician, but all your doing is turning your training manual into a homespun hillbilly tale about christmas lights or throwing football passes.

Darn, Cain, you must really worship the words that come out of your mouth. If you don't agree with something, you wont give up. But for real...WHO CARES?!?!?! I sure as heck don't care to listen to someone get a hernia because they are obsessed at always being correct in an issue. Everyone has their opinions and beliefs. If everything has to be based on scientific fact, then everyone needs to start from scratch and read Genesis 1:1.

My point? There are plenty of posts I read in these forums that I totally disagree with, but don't do anything about. If everything always has to be proven to be true, then faith and trust have already been thrown out of the window. I'm not always right, and neither are you, and that is what separate...
(continues)

It's kinda funny that you want to come in here like the Holy Reverend Neo like you have some sort of "MORAL?".

Well, neo, if I remember correctly, there are several posts of yours that started a bunch of trash themselves. In the ATT forums? If that WASN'T you, my apologies. It was probably some OTHER ass.

CainMarko said:
It's kinda funny that you want to come in here like the Holy Reverend Neo like you have some sort of "MORAL?".

Well, neo, if I remember correctly, there are several posts of yours that started a bunch of trash themselves. In the ATT forums? If that WASN'T you, my apologies. It was probably some OTHER ass.

I do have a moral, and morals in themselves are what keep this world together. Like I said, everyone has opinions, but not everyone is alike. Yes, I have started some controversial posts which I am proud of, because my experiences have made my statements true for my self. Your above post just proves to me that you hate it when people put their feet on your rug, because regardless of t...
(continues)

neorask said:
if you do not agree with it you never cease to be dogmatic, sarcastic, and completely non-understanding of veiws different than yours.

And this is different than you because....?

Now now children, does this have to become a war of insults? Wern't we just having a great, heated debate on CDMA/GSM differences?

I have only 2 months on my 1 year contract left. What would my ETF cost be?

Thank you, in advance.

Here in California it would be $175. Anytime before the contract is up it will be that price

I live here in Gainesville, Fl. (zip code 32614) I thought if you were close to the end of tyour contract it would cost less. But thank you for that insight.
Thinking to switching to Cingular, for better phone selection, more minutes for the buck, phones w/sim cards, more bluetooth.
I have given up on the Lg Vx-8000 and Verizon doesn't like it when some people prefer 1 year contracts.
Cingular is my 1st choice, T-Mo is second choice.

From what I understand the 8000 is coming out in Jan or so. They are going to be running a market test on it in San Degio with it's EVDO streaming capablities with about so they are setting up like 500 or something customers with them to see how they like it. These customers are hand picked and got some very firm stipulations to fallow if they accept, but the phone is close to coming out soon.

That's Phase IV. It happens to all the phones being approved for sale on VZW's network. But, yes you're right. January or Feb timeframe.

Stingburnmelt said:
I have only 2 months on my 1 year contract left. What would my ETF cost be?

Thank you, in advance.

It doesn't matter how close you are until the end of your contract, it would still be $175 if you cancel before you contract ends....Vzw doesn't prorate your contract end date.....

neorask said:
If everything has to be based on scientific fact, then everyone needs to start from scratch and read Genesis 1:1.

Genesis 1:1 = the opposite of scientific fact.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Cain may be an obnoxious prick (no offense Cain but you really can be 😛 ) but at least most of his posts are constructive and try and help people understand better. Every post i have read from you neo is "Crap this" and "Crap that" and "You suck" or "I hate this". Try and be a little more constructive with your posts and stop waisting everyone's time. You may ask "WHO CARES" but I'll let you know...ME. Frankly most of the information Cain gives out i am very interested in. Most of it helps me in my job and he seems to know a lot about the technology. I know a lot about the technology myself so i know most of it he isn't just pulling out of his ass and the rest i like to learn. Next time yo...
(continues)

Vox Dei said:
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Cain may be an obnoxious prick (no offense Cain but you really can be 😛 ) but at least most of his posts are constructive and try and help people understand better. Every post i have read from you neo is "Crap this" and "Crap that" and "You suck" or "I hate this". Try and be a little more constructive with your posts and stop waisting everyone's time. You may ask "WHO CARES" but I'll let you know...ME. Frankly most of the information Cain gives out i am very interested in. Most of it helps me in my job and he seems to know a lot about the technology. I know a lot about the technology myself so i know most of it he isn't just pulling out of his ass and the r

...
(continues)

I'm not sure anyone had to teach you...

CainMarko said:
I'm not sure anyone had to teach you...

Likewise, my child.

First of all... if I was your child, I would have killed myself. Secondly, don't sit around blaming me because you are acting like a complete ass. The difference between you and I is simple. I am a well informed, well educated "ass" who does his best to make sure people are correctly informed. YOU are just an ass. You can only get away with being an ass if you can bring something to the table other than "I hate my own company" and "you suck". Get yourself informed and at the very least act like a jerk only half the time... cool?

And ever-so humble, huh Caino?

SHUT UP! THE BOTH OF YOU! 👿

Ya and if you were my son, I would have put you up for adoption. I don't give a sh!t if you are a god or a retard, always having to be right or have the last word is being an inconsiderate ass. So i'm going to be like you and not shut up until everyone else does first.

Good god will you two stop?

Yes Cain is an insufferable ass BUT his posts do indeed have facts and he always posts findings that are relevant. Sure he looks at our VZW findings and disregards them as fiction BUT the stuff he posts (with links) I always read and assimilate into my knowledge. "Know thine enemy for that way will you only truly know yourself".

Both of you just drop the damn subject!

And he said I am supposed to stop, but I said "Officer, the light was pink!"

There you go!! There is a classic example. Sorry for being away, but the kids were sick. priorities.

If my only facts are from class room training materials given to CSR's (which, isn't that an insult to CSR's, claiming their training is nothing but simplistic??), where is your rebuttal? If my examples are so everday and too layman's terms for you, what's your response? Calling me Kris Kringle!!?? Oh darn. If only I had thought to protect my Pro-CDMA arguement from the use of holiday icons!!! Then maybe CDMA would be better than GSM.

🤣 lol

Uh.... yeah. What you guys are actually hearing only happens in one instance: radio interference. having your phone near a radio tuner or near powered speakers will give this effect. In a GSM phone, it causes a buzzing sound, but the voice isn't really distorted. In a CDMA phone it will cause the voice to distort but no buzzing usually happens. If it happens any other time than that, then there is something wrong with the RF in the phone itself.

What you are saying is that every GSM customer in Oregon and Washington is near some type of interference causing device. We agree it is called a GSM network.
Most of our ports to Verizon, Sprint and US Cellular have been ATTWS and T-Mobile customers. While coverage is the largest reason call quality is a close second. I don't know what book you get your information about CDMA in but it definitely has flawed data. It was probably written by the experts at Ericsson.

SPCSVZWJeff said:
What you are saying is that every GSM customer in Oregon and Washington is near some type of interference causing device. We agree it is called a GSM network.
Most of our ports to Verizon, Sprint and US Cellular have been ATTWS and T-Mobile customers. While coverage is the largest reason call quality is a close second. I don't know what book you get your information about CDMA in but it definitely has flawed data. It was probably written by the experts at Ericsson.

Well, if you are actually trying to say that EVERY customer of Tmobile AND ATTWS is a victim of such horrid RF interference, then I'd have to say ,that YES, there is something wrong with the THOSE networks. I'd like to see ...
(continues)

A carrier wouldn't raise the noise floor to increase capacity. The noise floor is actually the cosmic radiation known throughout the universe plus all the other CDMA users which are, through Spread Spectrum combined together and spread throughout the entire band. If a carrier is trying to increase it's capacity, it can set lower quality targets per user. In other words, once a traffic channels receive signal drops below -106dBm, force the handset to release the call. This will prevent that handset on the fringe from maxing out its transmitter which raises the noise floor. Networks are also settup for target Ec/Io (Energy per chip/total noise floor) during handoff conditions. For more ideal and more seamless handoffs, the output power of the ...
(continues)

Ahh!! Thanks.