Confused About Cell-phone Types?

How cell phone communication works

Communication between base stations and cell phone is established by a negotiation upon call origination. Once communication is established between base and mobile, movement of the cell phone is detected and the service is handed over from one base station to another. One cell at a time services each mobile in the narrowband services.

CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) is a channel access method which allows several transmitters to send information simultaneously over a single communication channel and hence multiplexing many users over the same physical channel. This technology is used by cell phone companies to allow many users to share the bandwidth of frequencies.

CDMA is widely used in Asia and in particular South Korea. This accounts for 17% of world cell phone market share.

GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) is a cellular network. The cell phone users connect to it by searching for cells in the immediate vicinity. GSM is considered as 2G (2nd generation) cell phone technology for providing digital signaling and speech.

GSM is the most popular standard for cell phones in the world. According to GSM association, it's estimated 82% of the global cell phone market uses GSM standard. More than 3 billion people from 212 countries use GSM phones.

Which one is better

There are many opinions on the advantages and features of CDMA and GSM technologies and which one is a better choice.

The GSM phone vendors claim that GSM is a feature rich system. It has more services and allows more data transfer. On the other hand the CDMA phone vendors claim that CDMA technology is maturing and is capable of providing the same features found on GSM.

By Bruce Atlasi