What do "GSM" and "CDMA" mean in terms of cell phone service? |
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They are communication standards
I guess I needed to elaborate in my answer about K1 phones. Well, I'll do it here.
GSM and CDMA are two different communication standards. All U.S. providers use exclusively one or the other. GSM means "Global System for Mobile communications", and it is the standard currently in use more or less worldwide. In the U.S., the major providers using this standard are T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless. CDMA means "Code Division Multiple Access". This standard used to be the dominant standard in the U.S. Now it is used by Verizon and Sprint. It still has more users than GSM, but the difference is not very significant. Historically, CDMA was developed by Qualcomm, made a U.S. standard, and gained some acceptance before GSM became established; however, once GSM was created, all countries without established CDMA networks accepted GSM - this is the reason why CDMA is almost non-existent anywhere but USA and Japan. From a user's point of view, the actual standard is not really important, with two caveats: first, you can't use a phone that uses one standard with the provider that uses the other standard; second, if you travel internationally, a GSM phone is almost a must. |
The main differences of CDMA and GSM are,
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digital mobile telephone system that is widely used around the world .
2.In CDMA network,there is one physical channel and a special code for every device in the coverage network.In GSM network,every cell has a corresponding network tower, which serves the mobile phones in that cellular area.
3.Handset network service is specific in CDMA ,but in GSM it is SIM specific, User has option to select handset of his choice ,sometime it will locked with a particular network contract for a particular periods, but we can remove it by getting the unlocking service from an provider like UnBBlock.com
4.CDMA offers more efficient use of an analog transmission because it allows greater frequency reuse, as well as increasing battery life, improving the rate of dropped calls, and offering far greater security than GSM/TDMA.GSM is the dominant technology used around the globe and is available in more than 100 countries. It is the standard for communication for most of Asia and Europe.
5.GSM is a very straight forward standard, whereas, CDMA is somewhat complicated.